FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 

THE 

PRINTING 

ART 


CAMBRIDGE 'MASS. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  BOUND  WITH 


MANUFACTURED    BY 

E.  I.  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS  POWDER  COMPANY 

WILMINGTON.   DELAWARE 


lyw^QJL,  L^^LAjot^  rjULdPtstO^   /<?s*?  — 


The  History  of  the 

E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours 
Powder  Company 


A  CENTURY 
OF  SUCCESS 


=0    G 


PUBLISHED  BY 

BUSINESS    AMERICA 

NEW  YORK 


TP 
7?5 


Copyright,  1912,  by 

THE  BANKER  AND  INVESTOR  MAGAZINE 
PUBLISHING  COMPANY 


BOSTON  COLLEGE  LIBRARY 
CHESTNUT  HILL,  UA 


NOV  19*87 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     Gunpowder  —  Arms  —  Ammunition  —  Explo- 
sives ' i 

II.     Nemours — Pierre     Samuel    du     Pont — Eleu- 

THERE  IRENEE  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS       .        .        .21 

III.  First    Powder    Mill    in    America— Another 

Country  than   France — Another   War     .     35 

IV.  Legitimate     Commercial     Evolution — Explo- 

sions        47 

V.     Mainstay    of    American     Government — Un- 
usual Business  Conduct 63 

VI.    Victor  du   Pont 81 

VII.  A  Family  of  Powder-makers — Always  Ready 
for  a  Public  Emergency — Alfred  Victor  du 
Pont — Alexis  du  Pont — Lammot  du  Pont   .     92 

VIII.     Henry   du    Pont 110 

IX.     The    Story    of    Dynamite — The    New    Farm 

Hand 

X.     The  Repauno  Works     ...         .      . 

XI.     Chemical  and  Experimental  Work     . 

XII.    Testing 

XIII.  The  du  Ponts  and  their  Workmen     . 

XIV.  Smokeless  Powder  and  the  Sportsman 
XV.     Development  Work 

XVI.     The  Present  Combination      .... 
XVII.     Financial  and  Investment  Position  •%■ 


114 
139 
161 
177 
186 
190 
203 
212 
220 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2011  with  funding  from 

Boston  Library  Consortium  Member  Libraries 


http://www.archive.org/details/historyofeiduponOOride 


The  History  of  the 

E  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder 
Company 

A  Century  of  Success 

I 

GUNPOWDER— ARMS— AMMUNITION — EXPLOSIVES 

NO  one  really  knows  when  the  making  of  gun- 
powder began.  It  may  have  been  in  China. 
It  may  have  been  in  Arabia.  It  may  have  been  in 
India.  It  may  have  been  in  Germany  or  England. 
Evidences  of  something  like  it  are  found  in  the  old- 
est records  of  ancient  Egypt.  The  mysteries  of 
"Greek  fire"  are  presumed  to  have  been  based  upon 
it,  and  many  of  the  spectacles  of  Imperial  Rome  are 
said  to  have  owed  much  of  their  brilliant  splendor  to 
the  flashes  of  pyrotechnics  and  the  bursting  of  bombs 
which  alone  could  have  been  created  by  substances 
analogous  to  powder. 

So,  in  the  first  place,  the  manufacture  of  gun- 
powder has  behind  it  the  venerableness  of  age,  to- 
gether with  all  its  romance.  Instead  of  having  first 
come  into  use  for  the  deadly  purposes  of  the  Battle  of 
Crecy,  as  is  so  often  stated,  it  dates  as  far  back  as  the 
time  of  far-away  religious  and  imperial  ceremonials 
and  appears  to  have  been  used  to  impress  both  the 
susceptible  and  the  ignorant  with  the  mysteries  of  the 

I 


2      The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

heavens  and  to  stimulate  their  instincts  of  reverence 
and  worship.  The  details  of  the  earliest  uses  and 
forms  are  lost,  but  it  is  significant  that  with  the 
knowledge  of  many  things  Oriental  which  the  Cru- 
saders brought  back  with  them  from  the  East  was  the 
familiarity  with  gunpowder,  not  as  an  instrument  of 
warfare,  but  as  an  aid  to  churchly  service.  And  long 
before  the  formal  introduction  of  powder  guns  at 
Crecy  by  the  English,  tales  are  told  of  the  customs 
at  Florence  and  Siena  where  fables  or  stories  were 
told  in  symbols  and  pantomimes  at  the  Feast  of  St. 
John,  or  at  the  Assumption. 

On  these  latter  occasions,  stage  properties,  includ- 
ing effigies  made  of  wood  with  limbs  of  plaster,  were 
grouped  upon  pedestals  rising  high  in  the  air,  and 
these  figures  gave  forth  flames,  says  the  historian, 
whilst  round  about,  tubes  or  pipes  were  erected  for 
projecting  fireballs  into  the  air.  So  imposing  were 
these  affairs  and  so  far  were  they  from  indicating  the 
use  of  powder  for  destructive  purposes  that  presently 
the  spectacles  came  to  be  held  only  at  Rome  when  an 
Emperor  was  to  be  crowned,  or  a  Pope  to  be  installed. 

After  a  time  spectacles  of  this  sort  spread  to  Eng- 
land and  there,  under  Henry  VII  and  Elizabeth  of 
York,  the  most  gorgeous  and  indescribable  displays 
of  the  effects  of  gunpowder  were  made.  At  the  mar- 
riage of  Henry,  the  famous  "Bachelor's  Barge"  car- 
ried a  dragon  spouting  flames  from  his  mouth,  while 
at  the  marriage  of  Anne  Boleyn  "there  went  before 
the  lord  mayor's  carriage  a  foyster  or  wafter  full  of 
ordnance,  which  foyster  also  carried  a  great  red 
dragon  that  spouted  out  wild  fire  and  round  about 
were  terrible  monstrous  and  wild  men  casting  fire 
and  making  a  most  hideous  noise." 

Later,  as  Europe  drifted  into  the  maelstrom  of  in- 


A  Century  of  Success 


Jhntfiir  J.  J>« 


PIERRE  SAMUEL  DU  PONT. 


4      The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ternational  conflict  which  culminated  in  the  ascension 
of  Charles  the  Fifth  and  the  reaction  represented  by 
the  Reformation,  the  ceremonial  aspect  of  gunpowder 
was  lost,  and  the  destructive  aspect  of  it  came  to  the 
front.  But  even  here  it  is  recorded  that  powder  was 
quite  as  much  used  for  ceremonial  and  display  as 
for  battle.  Returning  warriors,  for  instance,  were 
greeted  with  ignes  triump hales,  or  fireworks  columns. 
Poles  were  erected  with  trophies  at  their  tops,  while 
clustered  around  their  base  were  casks  filled  with 
combustibles,  which  when  set  afire,  made  the  poles 
look  like  flaming  trees,  while  forms  of  dragons  and 
beasts  were  made  to  appear  afire  at  the  tree  roots. 

Still  later,  there  developed  a  fad  of  what  were 
called  "fire  combats."  These  consisted  of  military 
lists  in  which  the  participants  wore  helmets  from 
which  fire  would  shoot,  and  used  swords  and  clubs 
from  which  sparks  gave  out  at  every  stroke,  "lances 
with  fiery  points,  and  bucklers,  which  when  struck, 
gave  forth  a  detonation  and  a  flame." 

Of  course,  in  time  it  became  impossible  to  with- 
hold such  a  remarkable  possession  as  gunpowder 
for  the  exclusive  use  of  the  church  or  the  rulers;  and 
it  also  became  impossible  to  make  a  mystic  or  re- 
ligious impression  by  gunpowder  spectacles,  however 
gorgeous  and  imposing  they  might  be.  The  increas- 
ing intelligence  of  the  public,  the  universal  spread 
of  science,  and  other  developments  of  civilization 
led  to  a  quite  common  understanding  of  the  nature 
of  the  material  used  for  these  rites  and  spectacles; 
and  the  spectacle  diminished  accordingly  in  extent 
and  in  interest. 

With  that  change  came  the  great  step  which  lifted 
gunpowder  out  of  the  realm  of  mysticism  and  placed 
it  in  the  greater  realm  of  practical  affairs.     And 


A  Century  of  Success  5 

here  begins  the  recognized  history  of  gunpowder  as 
such,  and  as  it  is  known  to-day,  and  here,  of  course, 
also  begins  the  controversy  as  to  who  invented  it. 
By  some  investigators  the  origin  is  traced  to  a  Ger- 
man, Berthold  Schwarz,  who  was,  curiously  enough, 
a  monk.     By  others,  it  is  traced  to  an  Englishman, 


FIRST    PRESIDENT    OF   THE    PRESENT    E.    I.    DU    PONT    DE    NEMOURS 
POWDER  CO. 

Roger  Bacon,  who  also  was  a  monk  and  known  as 
Friar  Roger  Bacon.  But  Bacon  lived  and  wrote  in 
1242,  while  Schwarz  lived  about  a  century  later,  and 
Bacon  himself  virtually  said  that  he  "didn't  do  it," 
remarking  in  his  historic  book  De  mirabili  potestate 
artis  et  nature  that  an  explosive  mixture  used  before 
his  time  had  been  often  employed  for  "diversion,  pro- 
ducing a  noise  like  thunder  andflasheslikelightning." 
In  those  days,  it  is  said,  the  projective  power  of 
powder  was  not  known,  the  writers  and  experiment- 


6      The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ers  being  familiar  only  with  the  explosive  power; 
but  however  that  may  be,  the  knowledge  of  the  pro- 
jective power  was  abundantly  demonstrated  at  the 
battle  of  Crecy,  and  from  then  till  now  there  has 


FIRST   DU   PON- 


POWDER   MILL   ERECTED    ON    THE    BRANDYWINE 
IN   1802. 


been   a   continuous   and  extraordinary  evolution   of 
gunpowder's  use. 

From  the  field  of  battle,  it  spread  to  the  field  of 
mining  and  engineering,  and  to-day  its  use  in  battle 
is  its  least,  its  most  infrequent.  Indeed,  it  is  a  singu- 
lar thing  that  something  seems  always  to  have  held 
this  most  potent  of  dynamic  forces  from  being  util- 
ized for  purposes  of  destruction.  Something — per- 
haps the  very  peril  of  handling  it — has  surrounded 


A  Century  of  Success  7 

it  with  a  sort  of  awe  and  reverence  not  un-akin  to 
that  which  the  ancients  sought  to  impart  to  it  when 
it  was  used  solely  for  purposes  of  spectacle.  It  has 
served  its  function  in  war,  deadly,  cruelly,  to  its  full 
power.     It  has  been  the  deciding  factor  in  the  fates 


SECOND  DU   PONT  POWDER  MILL  ERECTED   EARLY  IN  THE  LAST 
CENTURY. 

of  nations  ever  since  the  days  of  Crecy.  But  always 
it  has  remained  protected  against  misuse,  always  held 
back  in  the  control  of  the  government,  always  sur- 
rounded by  precautions  and  secrets  and  legal  pro- 
scriptions. 

Indeed,  the  manufacture  of  it  has  been,  as  it  were, 
a  public  trust.  In  the  very  first  authentic  record 
that  exists  in  Europe,  under  date  of  1326,  it  appears 
that  the  making  of  explosives  was  delegated  to  the 
supervision  of  a  council  of  twelve  appointed  by  the 
State,  and  the  use  of  the  product  was  limited  to  the 
defence  of  the  republic  (Florence).     In  1346  Ed- 


8      The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ward  III  of  England  ordered  that  all  available  salt- 
peter and  sulphur  (from  which,  together  with  char- 
coal, gunpowder  is  made)  be  bought  up  for  royal 
use.  Henry  V  ordered  that  no  gunpowder  should 
be  taken  out  of  the  kingdom  without  special  license. 
Elizabeth  converted  the  manufacture  of  powder  into 
a  crown  monopoly,  and  James  I  increased,  rather 
than  diminished,  the  proscriptive  regulations. 

And  so  it  has  continued  to  this  day.  In  i860  Eng- 
land revised  all  its  laws  bearing  upon  explosives  with 
a  view  to  making  them  still  more  minute  and  strin- 
gent, and  in  1875  the  same  country  enacted  a  statute 
on  the  subject  so  exacting  and  protective  that  it  has 
been  copied  by  practically  all  the  leading  nations 
of  Europe. 

Of  what  gunpowder  consists  there  is  no  secret;  it 
is  only  of  the  intricate  steps  in  its  manufacture  and 
its  evolution  into  the  innumerable  forms  of  explosive 
that  are  now  in  use.  Roger  Bacon's  famous  cipher, 
which  it  took  so  many  years  to  interpret,  gave  a  recipe 
for  gunpowder  which,  in  essence,  is  the  same  as  that 
used  to-day,  namely:  saltpeter,  41.2;  charcoal,  29.4; 
sulphur,  29.4.  Dr.  John  Arderne,  a  physician  for 
Henry  IV,  modified  this,  as  to  the  percentages,  and 
further  prescribed  that  it  should  be  "thoroughly 
mixed  on  a  marble  and  then  sifted  through  a  cloth" — 
which  recipe  was  almost  identical  with  that  given 
in  the  manuscript  of  Marcus  Graecus,  which  is  sup- 
posed to  have  revealed  the  mysteries  of  the  "Greek 
fire"  of  Greece. 

In  early  times  all  gunpowder  was  a  mere  loose  mix- 
ture of  the  three  ingredients,  but  later  a  process  of 
wet  mixing  or  "incorporating"  was  developed,  and 
from  that  came,  through  an  infinite  number  of  steps, 
the  compact  and  regularly  shaped  bodies  or  "brains" 


A  Century  of  Success  9 

in  which  most  powder  is  furnished  at  the  present 
time.  In  early  times,  too,  the  mixing  was  all  done 
by  the  simplest  possible  process,  but  the  evolution 
of  mechanics  and  the  continued  application  of  human 
cunning  has  reduced  the  whole  process  to  a  most  elab- 
orate method  of  manufacture  by  machinery. 

Of  course,  throughout  its  progress,  the  manufac- 
turing of  gunpowder  has  sought  increased  potency 
with  reduced  space  and  reduced  danger  in  handling. 
And  now,  as  what  appears  to  be  an  era  of  interna- 
tional peace  and  arbitration  approaches,  this  process 
has  reached  such  a  limit  that  it  becomes  in  turn  an 
instrument  in  bringing  about  peace.  For,  so  com- 
pact have  such  explosives  become,  so  tremendously 
destructive  is  their  power,  that  men  are  shrinking 
from  their  use  altogether  and  seeking  to  reconstruct 
their  relations  with  each  other,  as  nations,  in  such  a 
manner  that  there  shall  be  no  more  war  and  that  ex- 
plosives shall  be  closely  confined  to  the  uses  of  en- 
gineering and  mining. 

From  the  very  beginning  there  appear  to  have 
been  efforts  to  make  powder  smokeless,  but  it  was  not 
until  the  Spanish-American  War  that  the  efforts  were 
successful  enough  to  make  the  smokeless  product  any 
considerable  factor  in  battle.  There  has  also  been  a 
constant  expansion  in  the  size  of  the  guns  used  both 
in  the  armies  and  navies,  and  this  has  required  con- 
stant modifications  of  the  powder. 

ARMS 

The  evolution  of  arms  in  warfare  and  in  home  pro- 
tection goes  hand  in  hand,  of  course,  with  the  evolu- 
tion of  explosives.  How  long  ago  weapons  capable 
of  using  gunpowder  were  invented  is  quite  as  im- 
possible to  determine  as  the  age  of  gunpowder  itself. 


io    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

But  there  are  records  of  hand  firearms  being  used  in 
England  and  among  the  Flemish  as  early  as  the  four- 
teenth century,  while  it  is  quite  generally  known  that 
the  famous  old  arquebus,  with  its  gaping  mouth,  was 
the  forerunner  of  the  hand  gun  of  to-day. 

Spain  has  the  acknowledged  honor  of  having  been 
the  first  to  make  intelligent  and  effective  use  of  this 
weapon,  having  employed  it  to  tremendous  advan- 
tage in  its  wars  with  Italy  in  the  sixteenth  century. 
By  its  action,  the  fire  of  infantry  first  became  an  im- 
portant factor  in  military  tactics. 

Again  in  the  days  of  the  notorious  Duke  of  Alva, 
Spain  made  another  forward  step  in  the  use  of  fire- 
arms by  introducing  the  musket.  It  was  a  clumsy 
old  thing,  this  musket,  with  its  touchhole  on  the  side 
of  the  barrel,  its  flash  pan  and  quick  match,  and  with 
its  weight  so  great  that  it  had  to  rest  on  a  stand  ex- 
tending from  the  barrel  to  the  ground,  but  it  was  so 
effective  that  all  Europe  soon  copied  it  and  it  re- 
mained the  chief  weapon  of  war  for  two  centuries. 

In  the  quaint  German  city  of  Nuremberg  the  flint- 
lock gun  was  invented  in  151 5,  but  it  was  only  a  mod- 
erate improvement  on  the  matchlock  and  never  fully 
supplanted  the  latter  (although  it  was  used  generally 
in  the  early  days  of  the  American  Republic)  until 
the  percussion  musket  came  into  being  in  1830-40. 
Curiously  enough  it  was  a  Scotch  clergyman  who  in- 
vented this  method  of  ignition.  The  needle  gun  fol- 
lowed shortly  afterward,  and  by  1854  European 
armies  in  general  had  advanced  to  the  use  of  the 
muzzle  loader.     The  magazine  rifle  came  in  in  1886. 

Artillery  using  explosives  for  propellants  dates 
back  to  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries,  when  it 
is  recorded  that  great  stones  weighing  as  high  as  300 
to  600  pounds  were  projected  high  enough  and  far 


A  Century  of  Success  ii 

enough  to  split  the  masts  of  vessels  and  to  accomplish 
other  feats  then  considered  miraculous.  It  was  in 
the  Thirty  Years'  War,  however,  that  artillery  was 
first  used  as  a  scientific  part  of  warfare.  Gustavus 
Adolphus  was  the  pioneer.  A  few  years  later,  Crom- 
well made  good  use  of  12-inch  shells;  while  in  the 
period  of  Frederick  the  Great  artillery  service  was 
developed  to  the  systematic  and  highly  organized 
military  use  to  which  it  is  put  at  the  present  time. 
Napoleon  made  "artillery  preparation"  the  feature 
of  his  campaigns,  and  until  the  method  of  "combin- 
ing the  three  arms"  of  the  service  was  introduced  at 
the  time  of  Napoleon's  death,  the  great  Corsican  rep- 
resented the  farthest  point  in  the  evolution  of  arms 
humanity  had  yet  attained. 

Breech-loading  big  guns  came  into  service  in  the 
Franco-German  war  of  1870.  The  modern  quick- 
firing  field  gun  came  into  use  in  1891.  The  world 
is  now  in  the  midst  of  a  most  advanced  stage  of  heavy 
field,  siege,  and  garrison  artillery,  the  use  of  which 
has  been  rendered  possible  only  by  the  enormous  ad- 
vances in  the  ingenuity  and  science  of  making  ex- 
plosives. It  is  also  in  the  midst  of  an  equally  ad- 
vanced stage  in  the  evolution  of  naval  arms.  The 
latter  include  not  only  the  huge  12-inch  and  13-inch 
guns,  but  also  the  highly  organized  and  extremely 
effective  torpedoes  and  torpedo  propellants. 

It  belongs  to  the  history  of  explosives  to  narrate 
the  correspondence  between  the  gun  evolution  and 
the  powder  evolution,  but  it  is  to  be  noted  here,  that 
while  one  of  the  greatest  features  of  gun  evolution 
has  been  the  invention  of  the  disappearing  carriage, 
such  an  invention  would  be  without  half  its  utility 
were  it  not  that  it  has  been  accompanied  by  an  equally 
important  application  of  the  smokeless  powder.    This 


12    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

smokeless  powder  is  now1  being  succeeded  by  the 
noiseless  gun,  and  by  conjunction  with  the  latter,  it 
promises  to  effect  as  enormous  a  new  forward  step 
in  the  devices  of  national  offense  or  defense  as  is  re- 
puted to  have  been  taken  when  gunpowder  was  used 
at  Crecy  or  when  the  Spaniards  took  the  arquebus 
into  their  wars  with  Italy. 

AMMUNITION 

"Arms  and  the  ammunition  I  sing,"  Virgil  might 
have  written  and  have  had  almost  as  interesting  an 
epic  to  unfold  as  his  "iEneid."  For  these  two  great 
essentials  of  human  society  have  gone  along  the  same 
pathway  in  a  fairly  seething  competition  of  wit  and 
invention.  The  maker  of  the  gun  has  always  seemed 
to  be  seeking  to  make  a  use  of  the  latest  invention  in 
explosives  such  as  would  challenge  the  explosive- 
maker  to  an  incredible  effort  to  do  something  better; 
and  vice  versa.  And  the  result  has  been  that  the 
whole  progress  of  modern  nations  has  been  almost 
the  direct  fruit  of  this  rivalry.  Nations  have  won 
or  lost  their  positions  by  the  state  of  advancement  in 
the  invention  of  both  arms  and  ammunition. 

So  far  back  as  military  history  is  recorded,  there 
has  been  a  steady  concentration  of  the  mind  of  strat- 
egists upon  ammunition,  and  the  question  of  how  to 
keep  the  armies  supplied  and  yet  not  reduce  their 
mobility  has  been  of  the  utmost  gravity.  Originally, 
the  ammunition  of  one  side  in  a  battle  became  to  a 
greater  or  less  extent  the  ammunition  of  the  other 
side.  That  is,  the  arrows  shot  by  one  side  were  util- 
ized in  return  fire  by  the  enemy.  And,  to  a  certain 
extent,  this  was  possible  when  stones  and  such  ma- 
terial were  used  in  guns.  But  nowadays,  of  course, 
each  army  has  to  travel  fully  supplied;  and  the  main- 
tenance of  this  supply  becomes  an  acute  problem, 


A  Century  of  Success 


THE  CHAIR  WHICH  ELEUTHERE  IRENEE  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS 
USED,  AND  WHICH  SEVERAL  PRESIDENTS  OF  THE  COMPANY 
HAVE  OCCUPIED.  THIS  CHAIR  IS  STILL  IN  USE  IN  THE  PRESI- 
DENT'S   OFFICE. 


14    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

Conscious  of  the  urgency  of  the  problem,  powder 
manufacturers  have  given  constant  attention  to  in- 
creasing the  compactness,  the  portability,  and  the 
safety  of  ammunition.  In  infantry  ammunition,  the 
manufacturer  has  progressed  to  a  point  where  a  sol- 
dier is  obliged  to  carry  only  a  little  over  ten  pounds 
in  weight  to  be  provided  with  ioo  rounds  of  ammu- 
nition, while  each  pack  animal  bringing  up  the  rear  of 
a  regiment  carries  from  2,000  to  2,200  rounds,  and 
each  cart  carries  from  16,000  to  18,000  rounds. 

Similarly,  the  weight  and  bulkiness  of  the  ammu- 
nition for  field  guns,  siege  guns,  and  permanent  forti- 
fications have  been  reduced.  In  early  times,  solid 
stone  or  solid  iron  was  used  injhe  cannon;  but  as  the 
cannon  increased  in  size,  or  the  military  tactics  in- 
creased in  mobility,  so-called  case  shot  was  intro- 
duced, then  grape  shot,  then  quilt  shot.  In  1579,  red- 
hot  shot  was  invented,  and  it  was  used  with  great  ef- 
fect by  the  English  as  late  as  in  the  siege  of  Gibraltar. 

When  armor  plates  came  into  existence,  a  new 
problem  was  put  up  to  the  ammunition  maker, 
namely,  the  problem  of  vastly  increasing  the  pro- 
pelling power,  without  unduly  enlarging  the  bulki- 
ness of  the  projectile  or  the  explosive.  It  took  a 
number  of  years  to  arrive  at  success  in  this  line,  and 
the  work  of  the  ammunition  maker  had  to  be  supple- 
mented by  the  work  of  the  projectile  maker.  The 
latter  had  to  perfect  the  hardening  of  the  steel,  and 
the  former  had  further  to  condense  and  intensify  his 
powder. 

One  of  the  conspicuous  features  of  this  intensify- 
ing of  the  explosives  was  the  alteration  made  in  the 
explosive  shells.  The  latter  were  in  use  long  before 
armor  plate  came  into  being,  even  the  old  stone  or 
iron  balls  being  filled  with  gunpowder,  but  gradually 


A  Century  of  Success  15 

the  shells  came  to  be  fitted  with  a  hollow,  forged 
iron  or  copper  plug,  and  from  that  base  many  ex- 
traordinary things  have  evolved.  One  of  these  is 
what  is  technically  known  as  the  armor-piercing 
shell.  It  is  extremely  destructive  to  naval  vessels, 
and  yet  the  powder-maker's  share  in  its  construction 
has  been  reduced  to  so  fine  a  point  that  only  two  per 
cent  of  the  weight  of  the  projectile  is  the  powder 
contained  in  it. 

Another  problem  that  has  had  to  be  conquered, 
of  course,  has  been  the  reduction  of  the  danger  of  pre- 
mature explosion  of  shells.  This  has  required  con- 
stant and  progressive  experiment,  but  the  difficulties 
have  been  surmounted. 

The  explosives  used  in  different  countries  differ 
materially  as  yet,  but  the  United  States  appears  to 
be  well  to  the  front  in  all  respects.  It  promptly  took 
up  smokeless  powder,  and  as  quickly  dropped  melin- 
ite when  the  latter  was  found  to  be  too  apt  to  degen- 
erate. It  has  not  used  lyddite  to  any  extent,  but  it 
has  used  practically  every  form  of  compound  shell, 
shrapnel,  and  the  like  that  has  been  invented.  It 
has  used  the  most  recent  fuse  inventions,  the  latest 
modifications  of  the  rifle  bullet,  and  all  other  devices 
for  increased  power  and  diminished  weight  and  bulk. 
And  in  the  development  of  all  its  steps  of  progress, 
the  du  Pont  factories  have  led  the  way. 

EXPLOSIVES 

In  times  gone  by  the  chief  work  of  powder  fac- 
tories was  the  making  of  gunpowder  and  supplying 
the  needs  of  armies  and  navies.  But  in  modern  days, 
warfare  with  the  earth  has  become  greater  than  war- 
fare with  men,  and  the  powder  factories'  chief  func- 
tion becomes  the  making  of  material  for  blasting  and 


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LETTER  FROM  JOHN  HANCOCK  TO  MESSRS.  DU  PONT  &  CO.,  WILMING- 
TON, DELAWARE. 
16 


A  Century  of  Success  17 

other  mechanical  and  engineering  work,  connected 
with  the  laying  of  foundations,  the  digging  of  road- 
beds, the  operating  of  mines,  and  the  like,  and  in 
farming. 

The  making  of  gunpowder  was  comparatively  sim- 
ple. The  making  of  its  successors  in  the  explosive 
world  has  become  a  vast  and  intricate  process.  Gun- 
powder was  only  a  combination,  in  certain  propor- 
tions, of  simple  materials  such  as  charcoal,  sulphur, 
and  niter;  its  successors  involve  the  use  of  chlorates, 
perchlorates,  permanganates,  and  chromates,  and 
these  in  turn  are  mixed  with  all  manner  of  com- 
pounds, such  as  sulphur  and  sulphides,  phosphorus, 
charcoal,  sugar,  starch,  cellulose,  and  coal. 

One  by  one  these  various  combinations,  with  their 
resultant  explosives,  have  developed  as  chemistry  has 
progressed  and  as  public  demand  has  increased. 
The  tale  of  the  evolution  would  be  most  absorbing, 
but  it  is  almost  impossible  to  narrate  in  detail,  for  the 
reason  that  the  steps  in  the  invention  of  each  succeed- 
ing new  explosive  are  so  minute  and  the  secrecy  of  the 
processes  is  so  necessary  for  the  discovery  to  maintain 
that  a  story  could  hardly  be  told  in  form  for  the  gen- 
eral reader  to  grasp. 

Suffice  it  to  say  that  in  the  course  of  time,  explo- 
sives have  come  to  be  divided  into  three  or  four  dif- 
ferent groups.  The  first,  technically  known  as  ex- 
plosive mixtures,  consist  of  more  or  less  extensive 
modifications  of  the  original  principle  on  which  gun- 
powder-making was  based,  viz.,  that  of  mixing,  in- 
stead of  compounding,  the  various  substances  used. 
The  second  consists  of  what  are  known  technically  as 
explosive  compounds,  and  are  chemical  fusions  or 
blends  of  different  substances.  The  third  are  the 
smokeless  propellants,  which  first  became  generally 


1 8    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

known  to  the  American  public  during  the  Spanish- 
American  War. 

There  are  infinite  varieties  both  of  the  mixtures 
and  of  the  compounds,  each  varying  in  power  and 
serviceability,  according  to  its  composition.  Take 
the  mixtures  of  the  chlorate  of  potassium  and  sodium 
with  sulphur  or  charcoal  or  starch  or  sugar  or  other 
carbon,  and  the  result  is  a  mixture  that  is  fired  by 
very  slight  heat  or  percussion.  The  propellant 
power  of  the  mixture  is  very  great,  but  its  easy  igni- 
tion makes  it  dangerous  both  to  store  and  to  manufac- 
ture. Also,  it  has  a  tendency  to  explode  with  strong 
detonation,  is  not  smokeless  and  leaves  considerable 
residue  to  foul  the  gun. 

Mixtures  of  chlorates  with  nitro-benzines  or  sim- 
ilar aromatic  compounds  make  powerful  blasting 
agents,  the  strength  of  the  action  being  due  largely 
to  the  first  rapid  evolving  of  oxygen  in  the  chemical 
processes.  So,  too,  do  the  potassium  and  sodium  per- 
chlorates  and  permanganates,  although  the  latter  are 
slightly  less  sensitive  and  slightly  less  powerful. 
Bichromates  make  rather  feeble  explosives,  as  a  rule, 
but  there  are  ways  of  using  chromic  acid  with  certain 
other  compounds  to  make  an  extremely  explosive  as 
well  as  sensitive  powder. 

Among  the  explosive  mixtures,  nearly  all  explo- 
sives that  are  used  for  blasting  or  for  propellants  are 
nitrogen  compounds,  obtained  from  nitric  acid  by 
some  process  more  or  less  direct.  Gun  cotton  and 
nitrogen  result  from  one  kind  of  mixture,  while  nitro- 
benzine,  rick-a-rock  and  other  well-known  substances 
result  from  other  kinds  of  nitric  acid  mixtures. 
Among  the  latter  are  the  "flameless"  blasting  powders 
which  have  developed  in  recent  years  and  which  cor- 
respond to  the  smokeless  powder  used  in  military  and 


A  Century  of  Success  19 

naval  circles.  Even  mercuric  fulminate,  one  of  the 
most  useful  of  high  explosives  known  at  the  present 
day,  is  the  result  of  the  action  of  a  solution  of  mer- 
curous  nitrate,  containing  some  nitrous  acid,  or  al- 
cohol. 

The  first  real  smokeless  powder  was  gun  cotton, 
but  the  original  gun  cotton  had  a  fibrous,  porous  mass 
in  its  make-up  which  burned  too  quickly  or  was  likely 
to  create  too  great  a  detonation,  and  it  did  not  take 
the  place  now  occupied  by  the  so-called  smokeless 
powder  until  certain  processes  were  discovered  for 
gelatinizing  it  by  the  use  of  such  substances  as  ethyl 
acetate  or  benzoate  acetene,  or  other  benzene  com- 
pounds. 

As  early  as  1887,  France  adopted  a  gelatinized  gun 
cotton  for  its  magazine  rifle,  and  thus  became  prac- 
tically the  pioneer  in  the  use  of  smokeless  powder. 
In  1890,  Italy  adopted  another  form  of  smokeless 
powder  called  ballistite,  which  was  the  result,  indi- 
rectly, of  a  discovery  by  A.  Nobel  that  nitroglycerin 
could  be  incorporated  with  collodion  cotton  to  form 
a  blasting  gelatin,  or  dynamite.  Thus  nitroglycerin 
was  added  to  gun  cotton  as  one  of  the  substances  to  be 
used  as  bases  -in  making  the  smokeless  powder,  and 
ever  since  that  time,  either  one  or  the  other  of  these 
two  materials  has  been  the  chief  ingredient. 

Originally,  when  the  du  Pont  factories  first  came 
into  existence,  the  great  danger  in  the  manufacture 
of  its  products  lay  in  the  incorporating  of  the  ingre- 
dients one  with  the  other.  But  now  the  danger  lies 
in  the  chemical  processes  of  preparing  the  nitrogly- 
cerin, the  drying  of  the  gun  cotton,  and  similar  opera- 
tions. After  the  gelatinizing  has  once  been  accom- 
plished, the  balance  of  the  manufacturing  is  prac- 
tically without  risk. 


20    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

As  probably  everybody  knows,  gunpowder  was 
generally  made  loose,  as  it  is  to-day,  but  the  other 
explosives  which  have  developed  from  it  have  come 
to  be  made  in  various  compact  shapes  such  as  cubes, 
flakes,  cords,  and  cylinders.  All  of  these  are  designed 
to  regulate  the  rate  of  burning  of  the  explosives,  and 
the  calculation  of  that  speed  is  but  one  more  of  the 
many  fine  arts  which  it  has  become  necessary  for  the 
powder  manufacturer  to  acquire. 


II 

NEMOURS — PIERRE    SAMUEL    DU    PONT — ELEUTHERE 
IRENEE  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS 

THERE  is  a  little  town  in  France,  not  far  from 
Paris,  on  a  river  and  a  canal  and  with  a  long, 
long  history  behind  it.  It  is  known  as  Nemours. 
Centuries  ago,  it  was  a  Roman  lumber  camp,  and 
from  the  woods  (nemora)  which  surrounded  it  it 
derived  the  peculiar  and  musical  name  which  it  still 
retains.  Then,  as  the  aristocracy  of  France  grew  up 
and  the  peasantry  grew  down,  Nemours  passed  into  a 
center  of  feudalism,  erecting  one  of  those  memorable 
castles  and  strongholds  which  a  thousand  or  more 
years  have  not  sufficed  to  destroy. 

But  feudalism  palled  upon  Nemours,  as  it  palled 
upon  all  of  Europe,  and  presently  the  place  emerged 
into  the  liberties  and  hopes  of  free  thought  and  eco- 
nomic independence.  It  became  a  center  of  intellec- 
tualism,  as  it  had  once  been  of  feudalism.  In  its 
quiet  streets  and  away  from  the  seething  strifes  of 
the  capital,  beside  its  beautiful  waters,  yet  near 
enough  to  the  capital  to  be  in  touch  with  the  process 
of  learning,  the  arts,  and  the  government,  men  of  un- 
usual culture  found  refuge.  Writers,  philosophers, 
scientists,  and  the  like  were  glad  to  make  it  their 
home.  Its  fame  became  widespread  and  good. 
Even  at  this  time  so  extraordinary  a  relic  of  those 
days  remains  that  one  of  the  most  conspicuous  fea- 
tures to  confront  the  traveler  is  a  monument  to  Be- 
zout.  What  other  town  so  poetic  and  appreciative  as 
to  erect  a  memorial  to  a  mere  mathematician? 


22    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

PIERRE  SAMUEL  DU  PONT 

So  when,  in  the  strenuous  times  preceding  the  great 
Revolution,  Turgot,  the  political  adviser  of  Louis 
XVI,  who  alone  among  the  countless  reformers  of 
the  hour  had  a  plan  which  if  adopted  and  adhered 
to  might  have  forfended  all  the  turbulence  and  de- 
struction which  afterwards  ensued,  was  compelled  to 
relinquish  his  fight  because  there  was  little  of  the 
spirit  of  conciliation  in  any  hearts  save  his  own  and 
those  of  some  of  his  immediate  followers,  one  of  the 
chief  of  these — a  du  Pont — gravitated  to  Nemours 
for  refuge,  repose,  and  reflection. 

He  was  a  strong  du  Pont,  this  du  Pont  de  Ne- 
mours (born  December  14,  1739,  died  August  7, 
1817),  as  he  afterwards  became  known,  and  his  life 
was  one  of  public  thought  and  service.  Born  in  the 
national  capital  and  educated  for  the  practice  of 
medicine,  but  too  ardent  a  civilian  to  listen  to  any 
inner  calling  save  the  dominant  one  of  the  hour,  viz., 
what  to  do  to  rescue  a  nation  from  its  threatened  eco- 
nomic and  social  overthrow,  he  early  abandoned  JEs- 
culapius  for  Aristotle,  and,  together  with  the  famous 
Turgot  and  Francois  Quesnay,  founded  and  promoted 
the  school  known  to  the  world  as  the  Economists. 

This  notable  organization  was  the  direct  fruit  of 
France's  ever  increasing  internal  difficulties,  which 
began  in  the  autocratic  period  of  the  great  Cardinal 
Richelieu,  grew  worse  under  Mazarin  and  his  finan- 
cially brilliant  but  unimaginative  and  short-sighted 
successor  Colbert,  and  finally  culminated  in  the  ex- 
cesses and  follies  of  the  court  of  Louis  XVI.  Little 
by  little  through  all  the  intervening  years  the  position 
of  the  peasantry  or  working  classes,  and  even  of  the 
middle  business  class,  had  grown  worse,  until  some 


A  Century  of  Success  23 

manner  of  violent  resistance  to  the  conditions  had 
become  inevitable.  Far-sighted  thinkers  foresaw 
what  must  happen,  and  they  divided  into  schools  and 
groups,  each  of  which  had  its  remedy.  The  Econo- 
mists were  one  of  these  groups,  led  by  Quesnay  in 
the  first  instance  and  reenforced  by  Turgot,  who  was 
Quesnay's  pupil.  They  were  for  rectifying  the  eco- 
nomic ills  by  destroying  certain  special  privileges, 
dissolving  big  trade  corporations  which  had  monopo- 
listic powers,  reducing  taxation,  retrenching  in  gov- 
ernment expenses  and  terminating  government  bor- 
rowing. 

Pierre  Samuel  du  Pont  was  one  of  the  school.  His 
mind  was  broad  and  keen,  his  pen  was  able  and  con- 
vincing, and  he  soon  became  a  close  friend  and  in- 
timate both  of  Turgot  and  of  Quesnay.  Abandon- 
ing the  practice  of  medicine,  he  turned  to  letters  and 
became  editor  of  the  Journal  of  Agriculture,  Com- 
merce and  Finance,  and  later  of  the  Ephemerides 
of  the  Citizen.  In  this  capacity  his  writings  had 
great  force  and  influence  and  made  him  so  much  of  a 
factor  in  the  critical  affairs  of  the  hour  that  he  was 
sent  for  in  1772  by  the  King  of  Poland,  Stanislas 
Poniatowski,  to  become  secretary  of  the  council  of 
public  instruction.  He  filled  the  post  for  two  years 
with  energy  and  acumen.  In  the  meanwhile,  how- 
ever, the  vacillating  Louis,  driven  between  the  fires 
of  his  covetous  love  of  power  and  elegance  and  the 
increasing  unrest  and  passion  among  the  people,  re- 
sorted to  the  Economists  for  help  and  summoned  Tur- 
got to  power.  Turgot  at  once  sent  to  Poland  for 
du  Pont,  and  du  Pont  returned  to  become  one  of  the 
most  active  participants  in  the  brief  but  fruitless 
struggle  of  the  great  French  statesman  to  restore  har- 
mony. 


24    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

Turgot  fell,  as  all  students  of  French  history  well 
know,  and  with  him  fell  du  Pont  and  all  of  the  Econ- 
omist School.  But  the  fall  was  to  du  Pont  really 
only  a  beginning.  It  took  him  to  the  quiet  of  Ne- 
mours, or  rather,  at  first,  to  the  near-by  Gatinais,  and 
there,  in  the  undisturbing  pursuits  of  agriculture,  he 
not  only  wrote  the  now  widely  known  Memoirs  of 
the  Life  of  Turgot,  but  so  continued  his  manifesta- 
tions of  public  spirit  that  he  was  sent  for  by  the  min- 
ister of  foreign  affairs  in  1782  to  help  in  negotiating 
for  the  recognition  of  the  independence  of  the  United 
States  and  in  preparing  a  treaty  of  commerce  with 
Great  Britain. 

Doubtless  he  would  have  been  glad  to  remain 
upon  his  farm,  contented  with  his  books  and  his 
pen;  but  as  the  Revolution  grew,  as  the  forces  of 
discontent  and  disorder  threatened  to  overthrow  the 
very  government  itself,  his  sense  of  public  preserva- 
tion rose  to  its  urgency,  and  he  returned  to  political 
life  as  deputy  from  the  bailliage  of  Nemours.  He 
became  president  of  the  Constituent  Assembly,  and 
wisely  or  unwisely,  but  certainly,  sincerely,  and  fear- 
lessly, he  championed  the  cause  of  the  monarchy. 
His  attitude  proved  his  undoing.  It  drove  him  into 
hiding,  then  into  prison,  and  finally  into  exile  with  a 
price  upon  his  head.  But  nothing  could  curb  his 
spirit,  his  energy,  or  his  mental  activity. 

While  in  hiding,  he  wrote  a  yet  well-known  work 
on  The  Philosophy  of  the  Universe,  and  when  liber- 
ated by  the  general  amnesty  of  Robespierre,  he  be- 
came a  member  of  the  Council  of  Five  Hundred  and 
actively  and  persistently  fought  along  his  previous 
lines,  directing  his  forces  chiefly  against  the  Jacobins. 
To  what  end  this  determined  and  changeless  adher- 
ence to  his  convictions  might  have  brought  him  is  to 


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I 


A    LETTER    FROM    THOMAS    JEFFERSON,    DATED    APRIL    24TH,    181 1, 

ADDRESSED  TO  MR.  E.  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS. 

25 


26    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

be  judged  from  the  fact  that  when,  in  1797,  the  Re- 
publicans finally  triumphed,  his  home  was  sacked 
by  the  mob  and  he  only  escaped  transportation  to  the 
deadly  penal  colonies  of  Cayenne  through  the  inter- 
position of  a  friend  and  his  subsequent  departure  for 
the  United  States. 

The  arrival  in  America  in  those  strenuous  days  of 
this  refugee  from  France  was  not  an  event  in  itself 
to  amount  to  much,  for  there  were  thousands  of  other 
political  outcasts.  But  the  arrival  of  Samuel  Pierre 
du  Pont  proved  to  be  more  than  notable.  It  was  in 
1799  that  du  Pont  first  reached  the  new  republic,  but 
within  a  year  Jefferson,  recognizing  his  merits  and 
abilities,  had  called  upon  him  to  prepare  a  scheme 
of  national  education,  and  two  years  later  used  him 
to  convey  unofficially  to  Napoleon  Bonaparte  a  threat 
against  the  French  occupation  of  Louisiana.  His 
scheme  for  education  was  never  adopted,  but  his 
brochure  entitled  Sur  ^education  nationale  dans  les 
Etats-Unis  d'Amerique  is  one  of  the  early  American 
classics  and  is  found  in  every  American  library  which 
makes  any  pretense  to  historical  efficiency.  Several 
of  the  most  important  features  advocated  by  him  have 
since  been  adopted  in  the  school  system  of  France. 

For  a  time,  when  affairs  had  quieted  in  France, 
love  of  home  and  country  carried  du  Pont  again 
across  the  sea,  but  he  declined  to  accept  any  office 
under  Napoleon,  contented  himself  with  his  pursuit 
of  letters,  and  became  one  of  the  early  presidents  of 
the  famous  Institute.  Then,  when  Napoleon  fell  in 
1 8 14,  du  Pont's  political  instincts  were  unable  to  sup- 
press themselves  and  he  became  secretary  of  the  pro- 
vincial government  and  afterward  Councilor  of  State. 
He  hoped  that  the  turbulent  affairs  of  his  country 
were  at  an  end  and  he  was  willing  to  sacrifice  his  own 


-V: 


A  CHECK  DATED  DECEMBER   19,   1814,  MADE  BY  E.  I.  DU  PONT  DE 

NEMOURS  CO.  IN  PAYMENT  FOR  $7.20  FOR  CAT  TAILS. 

27 


28    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

personal  comfort  for  the  people's  good.  But  his  hope 
proved  vain.  The  redoubtable  Napoleon  returned 
to  upset  the  equilibrium  of  the  nation  once  more,  and 
du  Pont's  patriotic  courage  and  optimism  gave  way. 
He  was  seventy-five  years  of  age  by  this  time.  His 
family  had  grown  up  and  scattered.  There  was  no 
mission  left  for  him  but  the  honored  mission  that  falls 
to  the  Elder  Statesman — the  mission  of  repose  and 
counsel,  the  mission  of  watching  the  sons  and  children 
as  the  latter  build  their  way  into  the  careers  for  which 
their  parents  may  have  fitted  them  or  for  which  their 
own  caprices  may  have  destined  them. 

Curiously  enough,  this  mission  called  Pierre  Sam- 
uel du  Pont  back  to  the  United  States.  It  called 
him  back  to  watch  his  youngest  son,  Eleuthere  Irenee, 
whom  he  had  long  since  caused  to  be  as  profoundly 
grounded  in  science,  particularly  in  chemistry,  as  the 
father  had  been  in  civics,  lay  the  foundation  of  a 
career  which  should  make  a  place  in  history  even 
greater  than  that  of  his  father's,  for  the  entire  du 
Pont  family  and  name.  It  called  him  back  to  watch 
the  establishment  of  America's  first  powder  works 
and  the  creation  of  an  institution  which  has  already 
lasted  for  more  than  a  century. 

Curious  that  the  son  of  a  man  of  letters  should  be 
the  creator  of  a  manufactory  of  explosives?  Curious 
also  that  a  man  whose  weapon  was  the  pen  should 
be  followed  by  a  son  whose  work  was  to  be  for  those 
whose  weapons  were  the  gun  and  the  cannon. 

ELEUTHERE  IRENEE  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS 

Thoroughly  practicing  what  he  preached,  Pierre 
Samuel  du  Pont  had  established  a  large  printing 
plant  at  Nemours,  from  whose  presses  were  sent 
forth  books,  pamphlets,  and  other  literature  on  their 
far-reaching  errands  of  reformation. 


A  Century  of  Success  29 

The  masses,  however,  in  those  years  of  unrest  ap- 
parently desiring  neither  education  nor  an  under- 
standing nor  an  advocacy  of  their  rights,  nor  reform, 
and  having  shown  their  mal-appreciation  of  his  de- 
sires and  activities  by  wrecking  the  plant  and  totally 
destroying  the  family  estate  at  Nemours — a  not  alto- 
gether unexpected  or  unusually  ungrateful  re- 
ward for  such  unselfish  services  so  unconditionally 
rendered — another  country  had  to  be  sought. 

Eleuthere  (born  June  24,  1772,  died  October  31, 
1834)  nad>  meanwhile,  been  placed  by  his  father  in 
charge  of  the  printing  plant.  On  the  wrecking  of 
the  works  and  their  home,  they  both  fled  from  Ne- 
mours. Eleuthere  escaped  to  Ensonne,  remaining 
for  some  time  in  seclusion  there.  Ensonne  was  the 
locale  of  the  Government's  Powder  Plant.  Eleu- 
there was  a  scientist  by  instinct  and  nature.  His  fa- 
ther's philosophical  inspiration  and  training  only 
served  to  increase  his  desire  for  a  complete  knowl- 
edge of  chemistry.  He  became  a  pupil  of  the  great 
Lavoisier,  who  was  recognized  as  the  foremost  ex- 
pert of  the  day.  Lavoisier  had  recommended  Eleu- 
there for  the  vacant  superintendentship  of  the  Gov- 
ernment Works,  and  the  new  head  threw  himself 
with  traditional  energy  into  the  study  of  the  mys- 
tery and  manufacture  of  explosives. 

Like  his  descendants  and  representatives  of  to-day, 
there  was  nothing  that  escaped  his  observant  and  open 
mind.  He  studied  and  experimented  unceasingly. 
He  learned  every  possible  detail  theoretically,  as  well 
as  practically,  from  the  use  of  the  raw  material  to 
the  finally  tested  product.  He  furnished  many  new 
ideas  and  introduced  numerous  improvements.  In  a 
word,  he  raised  the  hitherto  rough  methods  of  manu- 
facture to  the  higher  level  of  a  recognized  science, 


30    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 


A  Century  of  Success 


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32    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  as  a  distinguished  pupil  of  a  most  distinguished 
tutor  rivaled  the  master  himself  in  his  thorough 
grasp  and  knowledge  of  the  products,  that  have 
meant  so  much  for  the  world  and  without  which  it 
would  be  impossible  to  carry  on  its  work. 

Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  de  Nemours,  founder 
of  the  great  industry  which,  as  a  tribute  to  his 
memory  and  enterprise,  was  in  1903 — one  hundred 
and  three  years  afterwards — renamed  after  him,  hav- 
ing made  good  his  escape  from  France,  reached  this 
country  in  the  year  1800,  then  occupied  in  its  own  re- 
making. He  landed  at  Bergen  Point,  New  Jersey. 
Pierre  Samuel  du  Pont  de  Nemours,  the  father,  Vic- 
tor, his  elder  brother,  and  the  respective  families  of 
each  accompanied  him. 

At  the  time  of  their  advent  here,  Thomas  Jeffer- 
son was  President  of  the  United  States.  The  country 
was  practically  without  means  within  itself  of  sup- 
plying gunpowder  and  explosives.  It  had  no  mills 
or  manufactories  organized  for  the  purpose  of  mak- 
ing them,  and  the  little  that  was  made  was  on  a  hand- 
to-mouth  principle,  just  in  the  same  way  that  people 
used  to  make  their  own  leaden  bullets  in  their  own 
homes. 

On  looking  around,  the  du  Ponts  saw  the  magnifi- 
cent opportunity  afforded  to  them  of  manufacturing 
explosives  of  a  character  and  quality  entirely  un- 
known to  the  people  here,  far  ahead  of  anything  of 
the  kind  that  had  been  produced.  Though  greatly 
lessened  in  fortunes,  strangers  in  a  strange  land,  the 
possibilities  of  this  great  and  somewhat  crude  and 
untutored  country  were  apparent  to  them  all,  and 
their  indomitable  courage  and  enterprise  came  to 
their  aid.  Without  loss  of  time,  the  du  Ponts  opened 
negotiations  with  Thomas  Jefferson,  General  John 


A  Century  of  Success  33 

Mason  and  John  Hancock,  for  the  purpose  of  estab- 
lishing a  plant  in  this  country  which  would  standard- 
ize the  products  and  supply  them  in  sufficient  quan- 
tities, and  of  a  grade  that  would  make  them  the  lead- 
ing ones  of  their  kind. 

The  project  was  received  with  acclamation  and 
many  prominent  people  of  the  country  expressed  their 
willingness  and  desire  to  cooperate  and  be  associated 
with  it.  The  broken  fortunes  were  forgotten.  The 
unbroken  spirit  remained.  The  inherited  strain  and 
pedigree  of  centuries  they  each  possessed  told,  and 
the  knot  of  men  set  to  work,  in  face  of  almost  unsur- 
mountable  difficulties,  to  the  task  of  erecting  a  plant 
that  should  be  worthy  of  their  experience,  of  their 
enterprise,  and  of  the  country  which  had  welcomed 
them. 

Seven  chief  factors  presented  themselves,  with 
which  they  had  to  contend — isolation,  water-power, 
labor,  the  means  of  securing  raw  materials,  facilities 
for  transportation,  and  lastly  money  and  machinery. 
To  decide  upon  the  right  locality  where  the  elements 
and  conditions  were  favorable  was  no  slight  matter, 
and  many  parts  of  the  country  were  visited ;  and  at 
that  time  traveling  was  a  very  tedious  and  slow  proc- 
ess. Virginia  was  considered,  Maryland  and  other 
parts  of  the  States  offered  sites,  but  nothing  appealed 
to  the  du  Ponts  more  than  Wilmington,  Delaware, 
for  there  it  appeared  as  though  nature  itself  had  pre- 
pared the  way  for  these  talented  emigres.  There,  the 
beautiful  banks  of  the  Brandywine,  the  scene  itself  of 
vital  and  important  occurrences  in  the  history  of 
America,  offered  the  ideal  situation.  Jefferson,  Ma- 
son, and  Hancock  saw  the  immense  benefit  that  such 
an  enterprise  would  be  to  the  country,  and  in  the  big- 
ness of  their  big  hearts  offered  their  moral  support  in 


34    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  founding  of  an  industry  which  is  now  the  fourth 
largest  in  the  United  States,  manufacturing  2,000,000 
pounds  of  explosives  a  day,  having  on  its  payroll  15,- 
000  people,  a  monument  of  perseverance,  intelligence, 
broad-mindedness,  and  sterling  integrity. 


Ill 

FIRST  POWDER  MILL  IN  AMERICA— ANOTHER  COUNTRY 
THAN  FRANCE— ANOTHER  WAR 

IN  1802,  two  years  after  the  arrival  of  the  du  Ponts, 
the  first  powder  mill  in  America  was  erected. 
The  grounds  around  it  covered  sixty  acres.  It  was 
situated  close  to  the  Brandywine.  The  money  and 
machinery  had  been  secured  in  the  country  they  were 
driven  from,  for  they  had  in  the  meantime,  both  fa- 
ther and  son,  revisited  the  land  of  their  expatriation 
and  obtained  them.  The  mill  still  exists.  It  is  still 
working  and  producing.  It  is  preserved  and  re- 
garded with  a  respect  amounting  almost  to  reverence. 
It  was  the  stepping  stone  to  great  things.  It  was  the 
beginning  of  still  greater  things.  It  was  a  help  to 
the  country,  and  a  reward  to  those  indefatigable  men 
whose  tenacity  and  far-sightedness  were  the  means  of 
its  foundation. 

The  du  Ponts,  during  their  more  than  a  century  of 
business  existence,  have  always  worked  shoulder  to 
shoulder  with  their  men,  have  passed  through  the 
same  experiences  and  faced  the  same  dangers.  They 
have  been  no  less  soldiers  of  industry  than  soldiers 
of  the  country,  and  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  de  Ne- 
mours was  always  willing  to  share  the  common  dan- 
gers surrounding  his  work-people.  This  spirit  and 
example  brought  out  the  best  that  was  in  their  help, 
and  to-day  loyal  descendants  of  these  first  early  em- 
ployes are  proud  of  being  on  the  company's  payrolls. 
The  first  year  of  its  existence,  the  du  Pont  enterprise 
35 


36    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

netted  the  handsome  sum  of  $50,000,  which  was  ac- 
counted an  unusual  achievement  in  those  days. 
To-day,  that  sum  and  more  is  netted  by  the  company 
every  seventy- two  hours. 

During  the  first  decade  ten  more  acres  were  added 
to  the  property  and  other  mills  established  on  the 
Brandy  wine. 

A  supreme  test  of  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  de 
Nemours'  patriotism  came  in  the  year  1812,  during 
the  awful  and  uncertain  war  America  had  with  its 
mother  country.  It  was  the  first  time  a  navy  had 
been  equipped  here  and  a  sea  war  experienced. 

Without  a  moment's  hesitation,  he  placed  the  whole 
of  his  services  and  his  equipment  at  the  disposal  of 
the  country  which  now  claimed  him.  Recompense  or 
reward  was  not  thought  of  or  considered.  His  single- 
minded  idea  was  to  do  all  that  lay  in  his  power  to 
serve  the  country  that  had  welcomed  him,  and  give 
the  best  of  his  brains  and  services  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  its  liberty.  Through  those  wars,  which  were 
the  means  of  its  freedom,  in  fact  through  the  whole 
of  them,  were  used  the  products  of  his  mills. 

He  bequeathed  to  his  descendants  a  firmly  united 
family  and  his  life's  work,  the  largest  and  most  per- 
fectly equipped  enterprise  of  any  kind  that  the  coun- 
try at  that  time  possessed. 

He  was  personally  the  soul  of  honor,  the  gentlest 
and  kindest  of  men,  far-seeing  and  liberal  to  a  de- 
gree, having  attracted  to  him  by  a  sheer  personal  in- 
fluence and  character  men  of  all  classes  from  all  parts 
of  the  nation.  From  one  of  his  letters  is  culled  the 
following : 

"Soutiens  ton  courage.  Les  du  Ponts  ne  s'abandonnent 
pas!" 


PIERRE  SAMUEL  DU  PONT. 
37 


38    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ANOTHER  COUNTRY  THAN  FRANCE 

That  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  grasped  in  any  way 
the  great  part  that  his  study  of  powder-making  under 
Lavoisier  was  to  play  in  the  future  of  another  nation 
than  France  is  doubtful.  Men  seldom,  if  ever,  are 
gifted  with  such  eyes  of  prophecy.  But,  as  stated 
previously,  the  visit  in  exile  of  Eleuthere's  distin- 
guished and  scholarly  father  to  the  United  States  was 
not  for  nothing.  It  planted  in  the  family  mind  the 
knowledge  that  there  was  another  country  than 
France  that  could  be  served,  another  land  where  pa- 
triotism was  not  likely  to  be  rewarded  by  banishment, 
and  where  enterprise  and  ingenuity  were  more  cer- 
tain to  be  in  demand  than  in  opprobrium.  And 
when,  the  hopes  of  a  republic  temporarily  vanishing, 
France  went  into  the  eclipse  of  Napoleonic  imperial- 
ism, young  Eleuthere  reached  out  for  the  New  World 
with  his  skill  and  his  ambition  and  found  there  his 
future  home. 

His  elder  brother,  Victor,  had  already  been  sec- 
retary of  the  French  legation  at  Washington  and 
consul  of  France  at  Charleston,  and  through  this  and 
other  connections  the  proposition  was  put  up  to  such 
leaders  of  American  thought  as  General  John  Mason, 
John  Hancock,  and  others  to  establish  a  powder  plant 
in  the  new  republic.  The  battles  of  1775  to  1781 
had  been  a  sad  commentary  on  the  powder-making 
skill  of  the  country,  and  many  an  advantage  in  the 
several  years'  struggle  had  been  lost  through  the  mis- 
erably poor  quality  of  the  explosives  that  had  been 
used.  So  that  when  a  qualified  student  of  so  expert 
a  maker  as  the  great  Lavoisier  offered  to  transfer  his 
faculties  to  the  United  States,  the  United  States  was 
only  too  glad  to  offer  them  a  welcome. 


A  Century  of  Success  39 

The  Revolution  by  this  time — for  it  was  between 
1800  and  1802  that  Eleuthere  brought  forth  his  prop- 
osition— was  past  and  gone,  and  the  young  nation 
looked  forward  eagerly  to  an  era  of  peace.  But  west- 
ward of  the  seat  of  government  and  of  the  centers 
of  business  was  as  yet  a  vast  wilderness,  peopled  with 
Indians  and  beset  with  wild  beasts  and  game.  Into 
this  the  march  of  the  country's  growth  was  gradually 
penetrating,  and  at  every  step  came  the  call  for  the 
thing  that  Eleuthere  had  to  offer.  Farmers  made 
their  living  not  more  from  the  soil  than  from  the  ani- 
mals of  the  forests.  They  shot  and  trapped  and  cured 
pelts  and  furs.  They  slaughtered  for  food  and  killed 
for  protection.  And  nothing  was  more  necessary  to 
their  success  than  a  good,  reliable  quality  of  powder, 
made  in  their  own  country  and  sold  to  them  at  a  rea- 
sonable figure. 

Besides,  there  was  the  specter  of  the  Indians,  of 
their  sudden  attacks,  of  their  unexpected  treacheries, 
of  their  merciless  retaliations  for  injuries  or  encroach- 
ments. And  it  was  but  one  of  the  many  duties  of 
the  government  to  maintain  troops  and  to  furnish 
ammunition  for  the  settlers'  defense.  Also,  though 
the  Revolution  was  over  and  though  the  nation  pre- 
sumably was  at  peace  with  all  the  world,  only  three 
or  four  years  had  elapsed  since  intrigue  of  one  kind 
or  another  had  almost  landed  the  country  in  war  with 
its  benefactor,  France,  and  even  at  that  very  moment 
other  intriguers  were  causing  hostilities  with  the  so- 
called  pirates  of  Teneriffe.  So  wise  statesmen  knew 
enough  to  provide  against  emergencies  and  to  en- 
courage industries  which  might  aid  in  making  that 
provision. 

Thus,  between  the  simple  necessities  of  domesticity 
and  the  potential  necessities  of  national  exigency  there 


40    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

opened  for  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  a  splendid 
chance,  and  he  took  advantage  of  it.  Location  after 
location  was  tendered  to  him  up  and  down  the  coast 
for  his  proposed  powder  works,  but  he  was  essentially 
a  child  of  little,  old,  picturesque  Nemours  in  the 
motherland — of  Nemours,  with  its  woods  and  its 
flowing  streams — and  he  selected  the  beautiful  shores 
of  the  Brandywine  in  Delaware,  near  the  present  site 
of  the  city  of  Wilmington.  There,  with  the  force  of 
the  river's  current  to  turn  the  wheels,  the  timber  to 
furnish  the  buildings  and  the  charcoal,  and  the  land- 
scape to  minister  to  his  inspiration,  Eleuthere  placed 
his  first  powder  factory.  And  there,  from  that  re- 
mote day,  one  hundred  and  ten  years  ago,  until  now, 
the  first  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  factory  has  re- 
mained. 

America  in  its  marvelous  growth  has  gone  on  west- 
ward, southward,  and  northward.  There  were  but 
four  million  people  in  all  its  vast  domain  in  those 
days ;  there  are  nearly  twenty-five  times  that  number 
now.  The  Mississippi  and  the  Ohio  were  its  utmost 
western  limits  then;  the  Philippines  on  the  Asiatic 
coast  mark  its  termini  to-day.  Where  the  Brandy- 
wine  was  once  in  the  heart  of  a  seemingly  primeval 
wilderness  as  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  cleared  out 
its  timber  for  the  first  mill,  it  is  to-day  in  the  heart 
of  a  vast  and  complex  civilization.  Cities  have  come 
and  cities  have  grown  great  in  the  meanwhile.  Gen- 
erations have  lived  and  generations  have  passed  away; 
all  those  things  and  those  people  among  whom  and 
for  which  Eleuthere  himself  lived  and  worked  have 
vanished.  The  making  of  war  by  the  use  of  a  pow- 
der composed  of  a  combination  of  saltpeter,  charcoal, 
and  sulphur  fed  into  flintlock  guns  or  rammed  into 
muzzle-loading  cannon,  has  long  since  given  way 


42    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

to  the  disappearing  carriage,  the  smokeless  powder, 
and  aiming  by  machinery.  American  settlers  have 
not  made  their  living  by  trapping  and  hunting  for 
two  generations.  Yet  the  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont 
plant  still  stands  on  the  Brandywine,  vast,  enlarged, 
an  industry  modern  in  magnitude,  wealth,  and 
power.  The  one  little  old  building  with  which  it 
began  has  become  a  hundred.  The  few  acres  which 
were  originally  required  for  the  entire  purposes  of 
the  business  are  now  expanded  into  many  times  the 
original  number.  And  where  once  the  wood  for 
charcoal  was  burned  within  a  stone's  throw  of  the 
mills,  now  whole  freight  trains  come  and  go  with 
charcoal  burned  many  miles  away  and  with  infinite 
quantities  both  of  raw  material  for  the  plant's  con- 
sumption and  of  the  plant's  products  for  the  world's 
consumption. 

Instead  of  passing  away  with  the  passing  of  the 
early  conditions,  the  powder  plant  has  remained  and 
changed  with  the  changing  circumstances.  It  has 
weathered  the  succeeding  conflicts  of  the  nation  for 
whose  benefit  it  was  created.  It  has  watched,  wit- 
nessed, and  played  its  part  in  the  hundred  years  of 
wars  with  the  red  man.  It  has  sent  its  products  ever 
westward  in  the  winning  of  the  wilderness  and  the 
opening  of  the  mines.  And  it  has  been  ready  as  the 
pioneer  in  every  forward  turn  of  civilization's  wheel 
when  a  new  use  has  been  found  for  explosives  or  a 
new  service  for  the  fruit  of  the  du  Pont  family  in- 
genuity. 

And  not  once  in  all  the  lapsing  hundred  and  ten 
years  has  the  plant  passed  out  of  the  hands  of  the 
family  which  founded  it — a  rare  achievement,  in- 
deed, in  the  United  States  of  America,  or,  for  the 
matter  of  that,  in  any  new  country  in  the  history  of 
the  world. 


A  Century  of  Success  43 

ANOTHER  WAR 

Only  ten  years  had  gone  by  from  the  time  of  the 
founding  of  the  first  powder  mills  on  the  Brandywine 
by  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  when  the  young  Ameri- 
can nation  was  again  in  war,  and  with  the  same  coun- 
try from  which  it  had  previously  wrested  its  inde- 
pendence. The  war,  happily,  was  not  a  long  one, 
and,  still  more  happily,  the  young  nation  was  vic- 
torious ;  but  it  was  long  enough  to  prove  to  Eleuthere 
Irenee  du  Pont  and  his  sons  what  had  long  since  been 
learned  in  the  older  world  across  the  sea,  viz.,  that 
the  making  of  powder  for  wars  is  nearly  as  much 
of  a  curse  to  a  powder  factory  as  it  is  to  the  country 
which  requires  a  powder  factory's  products.  For 
it  suddenly  brings  upon  an  institution  equipped  solely 
for  the  needs  of  peaceful  industry,  the  extraordinary 
demands  of  an  extraordinary  situation.  It  suddenly 
displaces  all  the  routine  and  system  of  labor,  all  the 
established  facilities  for  obtaining  raw  material  and 
producing  manufactures,  and  puts  the  entire  con- 
cern under  the  dread  spell  of  imperative  emergency. 
The  making  of  powder  for  business  purposes  is  ren- 
dered secondary  to  the  making  of  it  for  patriotism. 
And,  above  all,  there  rests  over  the  entire  concern, 
from  proprietor  to  chore  boy,  the  nerve-straining  sense 
of  how  much  depends  upon  the  thoroughness,  the 
efficiency,  the  promptitude  with  which  the  require- 
ments of  patriotism  are  met.  Not  a  soul  in  the  plant 
from  top  to  bottom  but  knows  in  his  heart  the  respon- 
sibility that  hangs  upon  meeting  the  nation's  need, 
and  not  one  but  feels  the  resultant  strain  and  test  even 
in  the  hours  when  he  is  off  duty  and  at  rest. 

Albeit  exigency  piles  upon  exigency  in  war  time 
with  a  speed  beyond  human  calculation,  the  making 


44    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

of  gunpowder  is  a  thing  which  cannot  be  hurried. 
Too  quick  a  turn  of  the  accustomed  wheel,  too  hasty 
a  fall  of  a  compressed  hammer,  the  careless  packing 
of  a  finished  product — and,  lo,  the  entire  plant  may 
be  blown  to  destruction!  Or,  worse  still,  a  hastened 
output,  an  unfinished  workmanship,  an  unconscien- 
tious delivery —  and,  lo,  the  men  who  handle  the  guns 
in  the  field  may  be  the  ones  to  meet  destruction! 

Furthermore,  the  suddenly  expanded  requirements 
cause  a  correspondingly  sudden  expansion  of  manu- 
facturing capacity,  of  mills,  of  raw  materials,  of  em- 
ployes. And  with  the  termination  of  the  war  comes 
an  equally  sudden  reaction,  when  mills  become  use- 
less and  employes  are  no  longer  required. 

Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  knew  of  these  things 
from  his  experience  in  France.  But  he  had  entered 
the  business  with  his  eyes  fully  open  to  what  might 
follow;  and  the  war  of  1812,  wherein  his  plant  fur- 
nished the  government  with  its  entire  supply  of  ex- 
plosives, served  but  to  impress  upon  him  that,  from 
a  selfish  point  of  view,  if  from  no  other,  wars  were 
rather  to  be  avoided  than  courted,  and  that  the  goals 
of  personal  and  professional  prosperity  were  to  be 
hunted  for  in  the  realms  and  circumstances  of  in- 
dustrial amity.  Together  with  those  who  followed 
him — his  own  sons  and  their  sons'  sons — Eleuthere 
from  the  outset  bound  himself  tightly  to  the  interests 
of  his  fellow- Americans  and  sought  to  evolve  busi- 
ness along  the  lines  consistent  with,  rather  than  in- 
jurious to,  the  latter's  interests  and  welfare.  He  and 
his  successors  made  patriotism  and  public  service 
their  watchwords  and  stuck  to  these  watchwords  from 
beginning  to  end. 

For  this  reason  the  du  Ponts  became,  in  hours  of 
national  crisis,  national  counselors;  and  in  their  fam- 


45 


46    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ily  archives  are  preserved  to  the  present  day  letters, 
correspondence,  and  documents  of  statesmen,  war- 
riors, and  distinguished  civilians  of  every  period, 
attesting  the  intimacy  with  which  the  du  Ponts  par- 
ticipated in  framing  public  policies,  preparing  for 
possible  contingencies,  and  meeting  great  exigencies 
when  they  occurred.  Eleuthere  impressed  upon  his 
sons,  who  first  worked  with  him,  that  they  must  re- 
gard their  relations  to  the  nation  in  time  of  war  as  a 
trust  and  must  neither  prey  upon  the  necessities  of 
the  hour  nor  neglect  its  duties.  And  no  successors  of 
Eleuthere  have  ever  been  allowed  to  forget  those  pre- 
cepts. 

It  is  but  necessary  to  run  through  the  volumes  of 
official  United  States  documents,  the  War  and  Navy 
Department  records,  the  Congressional  committee  in- 
vestigations and  the  like  to  verify  the  fact  that  the 
du  Ponts  have  never  overcharged  their  country  for 
its  powder.  However  great  and  sudden  the  war's  de- 
mands, like  those  of  1898,  which  followed  so  sharply 
upon  the  unexpected  blowing  up  of  the  Maine; 
or  however  prolonged  and  seemingly  exhaustless, 
like  those  of  1861  to  1865,  the  du  Ponts  have  accepted 
their  responsibility,  met  it  in  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice, 
and  emerged  at  the  end  of  the  struggle  without  a 
successful  or  sustainable  complaint  of  extortion,  or 
even  of  the  remotest  undue  expanding  of  prices,  being 
lodged  against  them.  In  fact,  the  story  of  their  re- 
lations with  the  government  in  time  of  war  is  one  of 
reduced  rather  than  increased  prices,  of  concession 
rather  than  demand.  The  successive  leaders  of  the 
works  have  been  called  into  the  private  and  confiden- 
tial conferences  of  the  nation  at  every  critical  period 
and  have  been  looked  to,  not  in  vain,  to  make  it  rather 
more  than  less  possible  for  the  country  to  meet  its  dif- 
ficulties. 


IV 

LEGITIMATE  COMMERCIAL  EVOLUTION — EXPLOSIONS 

THE  du  Ponts  have  always  looked  to  legitimate 
commercial  growth  and  not  to  military  exi- 
gency for  their  profit;  and  it  is  because  they  have  done 
this  that  their  plant  stands  stronger,  more  stable  and 
enduring  to-day  as  the  world  at  large  turns  its  face 
toward  universal  peace  than  did  the  wonderful  fac- 
tory at  Ensonne  in  France,  where  Eleuthere  first 
learned  his  trade  and  where  the  great  Lavoisier  pre- 
sided, in  the  tempestuous  days  of  Napoleon.  The  du 
Ponts  have  sought  to  camp  on  the  trail  of  industrial 
evolution,  as  it  were,  rather  than  on  that  of  martial 
tactics  and  international  contention.  They  have  kept 
the  eyes  of  their  scientific  vigilance  upon  the  ever 
expanding  utilities  of  powder  and  its  successors  in  the 
arts  of  engineering  and  mining  and  building  con- 
struction. Whenever  some  chemical  ingenuity  has 
rendered  it  possible  to  increase  the  effectiveness  of 
explosives  in  boring  tunnels  for  gold,  copper,  zinc, 
lead  or  silver  in  the  great  regions  of  the  mineral 
West,  the  du  Ponts  have  made  it  their  business  to  be 
to  the  fore  with  the  improved  products.  Whenever 
some  other  combination  of  the  ingredients  of  explo- 
sives has  rendered  it  more  easy  by  the  use  of  the  new 
combination  to  carve  out  the  paths  of  railroads 
through  the  rocks  and  precipices  of  the  mountains,  or 
to  sink  the  caissons  for  the  monster  buildings  of  the 
past  quarter  of  a  century,  the  du  Ponts  have  altered 


48    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

their  factories,  or  changed  their  formulae,  or  risked 
their  capital,  not  only  to  meet  the  new  need  but  also 
to  get  into  advance  of  it. 

Since  1802,  when  the  du  Pont  plant  was  first  es- 
tablished on  the  Brandywine,  there  have  been  less 


FIRST  OFFICE   OF   E.   I.   DU    PONT   DE   NEMOURS   AND   CO.— ANOTHER  VIEW. 

than  eight  years  of  war  altogether  and  a  full  hun- 
dred years  of  peace.  In  that  period  over  a  quarter  of 
a  million  miles  of  railroad  have  been  built,  and  it  is 
safe  to  say  that  a  big  percentage  of  the  track  could 
never  have  been  laid  without  the  use  of  the  product  of 
the  du  Pont  mills.  Certainly  hardly  a  mile  of  the  dif- 
ficult and  precipitous  tracks  of  the  Rocky  Mountains 
and  the  Sierras  and  the  Cascades  could  have  been 
enabled  to  worm  their  way  through  the  passes  and 
defiles  and  tunnels  to  tap  the  great  Pacific  at  San 
Francisco,  Los  Angeles,  and  Seattle.  More  than  two 
million  miles  of  highways  have  been  constructed  by 


A  Century  of  Success 


49 


farmers,  the  counties,  the  States,  and  the  nation,  and 
it  is  impossible  even  to  approximate  how  large  a  pro- 
portion of  this  work  has  required  explosives  to  clear 
away  obstructions,  to  make  passages  through  rocks, 
to  root  out  tree  stumps,  to  establish  grades. 


;'.:•,' 

FIRST   OFFICE    OF   E.    I.    DU    PONT    DE    NEMOURS   AND    CO.— ANOTHER   VIEW. 

Over  four  hundred  million  acres  of  land  have  been 
cleared  and  improved  in  that  same  interval  of  one 
hundred  years,  and  certainly  on  more  than  half  of 
this  there  has  been  stumpage  to  blast  out  with  one 
kind  or  another  of  powder  or  dynamite;  while  of 
mineral  product  requiring  the  use  of  explosives  for 
tunneling,  drifting,  stopping,  prospecting,  there  is  al- 
most no  available  means  of  calculating  the  amount. 
In  the  year  1909  alone  the  coal  output  was  over  four 
hundred  and  seventy  million  tons,  practically  every 
ton  of  which  had  to  be  loosened  either  directly  or 
indirectly,  by  blasts  of  powder,  gelatin  or  dynamite. 


50    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

In  the  same  year  the  copper  output  was  nearly  a  mil- 
lion tons,  and  far  more  than  coal  does  copper  require 
to  be  freed  from  its  fast  home  in  nature's  walls  by  the 
use  of  the  drill  and  the  stick  of  powder. 

Fifty-four  million  ounces  of  silver,  a  third  of  a 
million  tons  of  lead,  and  nearly  half  a  million  pounds 
of  pure  gold  had  to  find  their  way  into  men's  service 
in  that  same  year  by  the  application  of  the  agencies 
which  it  was  the  place  of  the  du  Pont  mills  to  sup- 
ply. 

And  when  to  all  this  is  added  the  use  in  blasting 
for  excavation,  in  driving  tunnels  under  rivers,  as 
at  New  York,  at  Detroit  and  at  Chicago,  and  in  run- 
ning subways  under  the  streets  of  metropolises,  some 
slight  conception  may  be  derived  of  the  commercial 
as  well  as  the  military  responsibility  which  rests  upon 
the  du  Ponts.  The  registered  cost  of  buildings  alone 
for  1910  in  fifty-two  of  the  principal  cities  of  the 
United  States  was  seven  hundred  and  fifty  million 
dollars,  or  three  quarters  of  a  billion — and  certainly 
a  vast  percentage  of  that  huge  construction  would 
have  been  impossible  without  explosives. 

There  is  no  multiple  by  which  these  annual  figures 
can  be  amplified  to  give  a  comprehensive  sense  of 
the  developments  of  the  no  years  since  the  du  Pont 
plant  was  first  built,  because  the  ratio  of  growth  for 
each  particular  sphere  in  which  explosives  have  been 
used  varies  with  the  sphere  itself  and  with  the  nature 
of  the  explosives.  But  certain  it  is  that  to  advance 
apace  with  such  enormous  progress,  to  keep  in  front 
of  the  growing  needs,  to  furnish  men  with  an  explo- 
sive product  that  would  fully  meet  the  restless  spirit 
of  modern  invention  in  general  as  fast  as  it  evolved, 
and  to  do  this  without  interruption  for  a  century  and 
a  tenth  is  a  task  that  may  well  have  taxed  the  power 


A  Century  of  Success  51 

of  more  than  one  great  institution  and  of  more  than 
one  set  of  men.  Compared  volume  for  volume,  these 
activities  of  a  hundred  years  of  peace  make  the  re- 
quirements of  eight  years  of  war  look  but  small  in- 
deed. Eight  years  of  war  never  would  have  made 
the  du  Pont  plant  the  great  industry  which  it  is  to- 
day.    One  hundred  years  of  peace  have  done  it. 

And  the  record  of  evolution  within  the  plant  itself 
is  correspondingly  diverse  and  commanding.  From 
the  very  first  days  Eleuthere  must  have  had  at  least 
some  glimmering,  however  meager,  of  the  problems 
that  were  to  come,  for  he  established  two  fundamen- 
tal principles  by  which  the  industry  should  always 
be  guided.  The  first  was  that  all  its  progress  should 
rest  upon  sound  knowledge.  Just  as  he  himself  had 
been  educated  under  the  tutelage  of  the  master  chem- 
ist, Lavoisier,  so  he  provided  that  all  those  who 
should  come  after  him  should  have  equal  education. 
The  other  was  that  the  control  of  the  industry  should 
never  pass  out  of  his  own  family,  that  his  sons  should 
remain  with  it  and  their  sons  after  them,  so  that  it 
might  always  be  a  du  Pont  institution,  always  stand 
for  those  public-spirited,  enterprising  and  indefatiga- 
ble principles  and  standards  for  which  Eleuthere  and 
his  distinguished  father  before  him  stood. 

EXPLOSIONS 

To  the  end  that  these  principles  might  be  put  in 
force,  Eleuthere  himself  gave  his  sons  all  the  culture 
and  training  that  the  educational  facilities  of  the  time 
could  command.  Of  sons  he  had  three  and  each  was 
sent  to  college,  only  to  be  returned  to  apply  the  ad- 
vantages of  his  education  to  the  powder  business. 
Alfred  Victor  came  first  and  first  fell  into  the  re- 


52    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

sponsibilities  of  his  father.  He  had  finished  his 
courses  at  American  colleges  and  was  about  to  go 
abroad  for  a  finish  in  technique  when  the  mills  at 
Wilmington  were  almost  totally  destroyed  by  a  dis- 
astrous explosion  and  the  fortunes  of  the  family  were 
so  impaired  temporarily  that  he  had  to  remain  at 
home  and  assist  in  their  reconstruction. 

That  was  in  1818.  Only  ten  years  before  the  busi- 
ness had  grown  to  an  output  of  600,000  pounds  of 
powder  a  year,  and  in  the  war  of  1812  it  had  supplied 
the  entire  demands  of  the  government.  So  its  de- 
struction by  explosion  was  a  disaster  of  momentous 
scope  for  those  days,  and  its  rebuilding  a  task  calling 
for  resourcefulness,  pluck,  and  greatest  determina- 
tion. The  rehabilitation  might  have  been  accom- 
plished by  some  one  of  less  education,  but  powder- 
making  by  that  time  was  becoming  considerable  of  an 
art  the  world  over.  Firearms  were  improving,  as 
was  army  ordnance  of  every  kind.  The  Napoleonic 
wars,  which  had  but  recently  ended  at  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  had  brought  into  existence  many  factories 
throughout  Europe,  and  the  pressure  at  the  Atlantic 
gates  for  the  admission  of  European  product  was  so 
great  that  nothing  but  continued  cunning  in  manu- 
facture and  continued  and  stupendous  energy  in  trade 
promotion  could  save  the  day  for  the  destroyed  mills 
of  the  Brandywine.  Alfred  Victor,  like  his  father, 
went  into  the  laboratory  and  from  there  turned  out  a 
product  so  steadily  improved  in  quality,  so  con- 
stantly bettered  in  a  hundred  or  more  respects,  that 
not  only  could  the  foreign  imports  get  no  foothold, 
but  by  the  time  the  war  with  Mexico  developed,  in 
1846,  the  du  Ponts  were  again  fully  equal  to  the  ex- 
traordinary exigencies  of  armed  national  conflict. 

Eleuthere,  the  founder,  died  suddenly  in  Philadel- 


A  Century  of  Success  53 

phia  of  cholera  in  1834,  but  by  that  year  Alfred  Vic- 
tor was  so  far  advanced  in  practical  skill  and  business 
acumen  that  the  plant  passed  to  him  without  a  jar 
to  its  progress.  For  a  brief  time  after  Eleuthere's 
death  Alfred  Victor  was  aided  by  a  brother-in-law, 
who  with  him  weathered  the  terrible  financial  gale 
of  the  panic  of  1837;  but  that  was  the  only  period 
during  which  any  one  not  bearing  the  du  Pont  name 
had  any  conspicuous  part  in  the  direction  of  the  con- 
cern. 

In  the  very  year  of  the  naval  war  of  1812  a  second 
son  had  been  born  to  Eleuthere.  He  had  graduated 
from  West  Point  and  had  spent  a  few  years  in  the 
army;  but  as  the  father  grew  old  and  came  to  the 
edge  of  the  catastrophe  which  so  unexpectedly  called 
him,  this  son,  Henry  by  name,  came  in  from  the  outer 
world  and  gave  himself  to  the  family  business.  He 
was  in  the  concern  with  the  brother-in-law  and  Al- 
fred when  the  1837  panic  came,  and  it  was  he,  more 
than  any  other,  who  developed  the  executive  power 
and  the  commercial  imagination  which  first  lifted 
the  du  Pont  plant  to  the  scale  of  magnitude  which  it 
still  maintains — that  is,  the  scale  of  physical  magni- 
tude. 

During  Henry's  administration  there  came  an- 
other terrific  explosion,  just  one  year  after  the  war 
with  Mexico.  It  tore  holes  as  deep  in  the  family 
prosperity  as  it  did  in  the  walls  of  the  mills  or  in  the 
soil  upon  which  the  mills  were  built.  But  it  could 
not  deprive  the  family  of  that  one  element  of  supe- 
rior power  for  which  Eleuthere  had  laid  the  founda- 
tion, viz.,  scientific,  technical  knowledge  of  the  mak- 
ing of  powder.  Although  the  mills  were  down,  Al- 
fred Victor  and  Henry  still  knew  how  to  make  pow- 
der and  how  to  make  it  better  than  any  one  else.  Their 


54 


A  Century  of  Success 


55 


knowledge,  their  education,  was  their  capital.  With 
it  they  succeeded  not  only  in  a  second  thorough  reha- 
bilitation, but  seven  years  later  were  so  strongly  re- 
entrenched  that  they  were  sending  supplies  abroad 
and  a  little  later  were  the  chief  source  of  supply  for 
the  munitions  of  war  for  the  Crimea. 


SECOND  OFFICE  OF  E.  I.  DU  PONT  DE  NEMOURS  AND  CO.— ANOTHER  VIEW. 

Then  came  a  harder  test  for  the  du  Ponts  than  any 
that  had  yet  befallen  them.  It  was  not  a  test  of  the 
power  to  survive  disaster  within  the  plant  itself  or 
panic  without.  It  was  a  test  of  ability  to  meet  the 
scientific  competition  of  some  of  the  keenest  scientific 
minds  the  world  over.  For,  about  the  time  of  the 
Mexican  War,  the  chemists  of  Germany,  France, 
England,  and  Austria  began  to  experiment  with  nitric 
acid  and  gun  cotton.  They  were  looking  for  a  substi- 
tute for  the  traditional  gunpowder;  and  from  then 
onward  the  making  of  explosives  of  every  kind  was  an 
international  battle  of  chemical  wits.     Two  German 


56    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

chemists,  Schoenhein  and  Boetger,  found  the  first 
substitute,  but  before  it  had  been  long  in  use  it  was 
discovered  to  be  incapable  of  keeping  long  unaltered. 
Serious  explosions  took  place  because  of  its  deteriora- 
tion, and  its  manufacture  had  to  be  abandoned,  just 
as  the  machinery  of  the  plants  in  many  places  was 
being  adapted  for  making  it. 

Then  came  the  work  of  the  Austrian,  Von  Lenk, 
with  a  combination  of  nitric  acid  and  gun  cotton  that 
kept  stable  and  uniform.  But  factory  processes  had 
hardly  been  altered  to  its  use  when  it  was  found  that 
gases  generated  from  it  in  explosion  attacked  the  bar- 
rels of  guns,  so  that  this  invention  in  turn  had  to  be 
relegated  to  use  solely  as  a  blasting  powder  and  for 
filling  shells  and  torpedoes.  So  injurious  was  its  ef- 
fect that  the  Austrian  government,  which  had  pur- 
chased all  the  European  rights  of  Von  Lenk's  inven- 
tion, forbade  its  manufacture  altogether. 

Out  of  this  experience  grew  the  revolutionizing  in- 
vention of  Sir  Frederick  Abel,  of  England,  whereby 
gun  cotton  was  reduced  to  a  fine  powder  by  beating 
machines  and  then  pressed  into  the  hexagonal  and 
other  forms  in  which  practically  all  powders  are  still 
made. 

The  du  Ponts,  separated  by  3000  miles  of  sea  from 
all  these  experiments,  had  nevertheless  to  keep  up 
with  and  even  ahead  of  them  or  lose  their  trade  and 
prestige.  In  their  laboratories  on  the  Brandywine 
they  had  to  be  as  clever  as  the  chemists  in  all  the 
older  laboratories  of  all  Europe.  Standing  as  an  in- 
dependent firm,  in  a  country  where  each  man's  sal- 
vation depended  upon  his  own  wits,  they  had  to 
match  themselves  against  the  imperial  subsidies  and 
the  army-and-navy-supported  specialists. 

And  not  only  this,  but  scarcely  were  they  again  at 


A  Century  of  Success  57 

a  point  of  successful  business  amplitude  when  the  tre- 
mendous exigencies  of  the  Civil  War  interposed,  dis- 
turbed all  the  laws  and  conditions  of  their  normal 
progress,  and  placed  them  for  four  long  years  under 
the  terrific  strain  and  awful  responsibility  of  not  fail- 
ing their  country  in  the  time  of  its  need.  While  the 
Civil  War  was  in  progress,  the  great  inventions  of 
the  Swedish  chemist,  Alfred  Nobel — now  so  widely 
known  as  the  founder  of  the  Nobel  prizes  for  art,  lit- 
erature, science,  and  peace — were  first  coming  into 
view  and  leading  the  way  to  the  discovery  of  the 
powerful  and  deadly  nitroglycerine;  and  the  inter- 
ruption by  the  war  threatened  to  leave  the  du  Ponts 
far  behind  their  European  competitors. 

But  as  in  1812  and  again  in  1846,  so  now  in  1861 
to  1865  the  patriotism  of  the  family  worked  hand  in 
hand  with  the  professional  and  technical  genius 
handed  down  from  the  founder,  and  the  firm  emerged 
perhaps  even  stronger  at  the  end  of  the  crucial  period 
than  it  had  been  at  the  beginning. 

At  any  rate,  when  the  great  era  of  railroad  build- 
ing and  mine  sinking  in  the  Western  mountains  set 
in,  right  after  the  war,  the  du  Ponts,  by  some  innate 
magic  of  power,  were  to  the  front  with  every  facility 
of  explosives  that  the  intervening  years  had  devel- 
oped, either  at  home  or  abroad.  With  seemingly 
consummate  ease  they  passed  from  the  manufacture 
of  explosives  for  the  destructive  purposes  of  battle 
to  the  manufacture  of  explosives  for  the  constructive 
purposes  of  industrial  evolution. 

The  steam  railroad  building  called  first  for  ex- 
plosives for  the  making  of  roadbeds  and  tunnels,  and 
then  in  turn  for  aid  in  the  mining  of  coal  to  furnish 
the  motive  power.  And  both  of  these  demands  cre- 
ated new  requirements  in  the  manufacture  of  powder 


58    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  its  corollaries.  Explosives  now  had  to  be  trans- 
ported across  the  continent  in  jolting  freight  trains. 
They  had  to  be  carried  on  mule-back  or  in  lumbering 
wagons  to  remote  construction  camps  in  the  high 
mountains.  They  had  to  be  handled,  often,  by  un- 
trained and  careless  men. 

And  they  had  to  be  adapted  to  meet  all  these  con- 
ditions. The  powerful  nitroglycerin,  which  Nobel 
had  invented,  which  otherwise  was  so  useful,  was 
almost  unserviceable  because  of  its  liquidity.  It  had 
to  be  dissolved  at  first  in  wood  naphtha  for  the  sake 
of  greater  security.  Then  that,  in  turn,  was  found 
impracticable,  because  the  nitroglycerin  had  to  be 
again  separated  from  the  wood  naphtha  on  reaching 
its  destination. 

One  by  one  the  du  Ponts  followed  these  changes, 
or  led  them,  altering  their  costly  machinery  with 
each  new  process  and  breaking  in  their  trained  and 
expert  employes  step  by  step  to  the  ever  more  difficult 
work  which  came  before  them.  By  the  early  eight- 
ies, when  the  great  Hoosac  Tunnel  through  the 
Fitchburg  Mountains  in  Massachusetts,  then  the  most 
notable  engineering  work  of  its  kind  on  the  conti- 
nent, was  being  constructed,  the  nitroglycerin  was  be- 
ing transported  by  the  more  or  less  cumbersome  proc- 
ess of  being  first  frozen  before  being  shipped.  This 
was  a  costly  and  awkward  way  of  doing  it,  but  it  had 
to  be  done  and  machinery  had  to  be  provided  for  it. 

Yet  even  this  process  was  no  more  than  success- 
fully inaugurated  before  the  redoubtable  and  irre- 
pressible Nobel,  of  Sweden,  found  a  way  of  mixing 
nitroglycerin  with  a  highly  infusorial  earth  cap- 
able of  being  molded  into  "sticks,"  and  thus  brought 
to  the  world  the  famous  "dynamite." 

Nobel  in  1878  had  invented  a  combination  of  nitric 


59 


60    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

acid,  cellulose,  and  glycerin  from  which  the  nitro- 
glycerin did  not  separate  even  in  water  and  which 
was  more  powerful  even  than  dynamite.  And  this 
substance,  together  with  dynamite,  once  more  altered 
practically  the  whole  face  of  the  explosives  industry. 
It  put  a  convenient  and  easily  transportable  explos- 
ive into  the  field,  which  was  to  work  in  cooperation 
with  the  so-called  diamond  drill  to  extend  in- 
definitely the  power  of  tunnel  boring,  of  rock  blast- 
ing, of  foundation  laying  and  of  what  not;  but  it  was 
so  convenient  a  form  that  for  a  time  it  almost  sup- 
planted everything  else  and  shifted  the  entire  busi- 
ness of  explosive  making  away  from  the  accumulated 
machinery  and  facilities  of  past  years  to  entirely  new 
machinery  and  new  facilities. 

Persons  less  solidly  and  scientifically  trained  than 
the  du  Ponts  would  have  gone  down  under  the  pres- 
sure of  these  rapid  changes  and  this  endless  competi- 
tion of  ingenuity.  But  they  not  only  stuck  to  their 
last,  they  went  their  competitors  one  better.  With 
each  improved  invention  they  had  their  own  inven- 
tion, in  turn  their  own  improvement,  their  own 
adaptation  of  their  product  to  American  conditions. 
The  European  makers,  subsidized  though  they  were 
in  the  main  by  their  governments,  had  no  such  colos- 
sal range  of  conservative  enterprises  to  feed  as  was 
afforded  by  America.  They  had  no  vast  mines,  and 
no  amazing  railroads  such  as  the  Rio  Grande.  There 
were  no  boundless  stretches  of  forest  to  unstump  and 
lay  clear  for  the  grain  field  and  the  apple  tree.  The 
skyscraper  took  no  root  abroad  until  long  after  it  had 
made  cliff  dwellings  of  the  principal  streets  in  every 
leading  city  of  America.  So  the  du  Ponts  had  an 
arena  and  a  problem  strictly  their  own.  It  could  be 
lost  to  them  only  by  their  failure  to  live  up  to  the 


A  Century  of  Success  6i 

speed  of  the  hour,  only  by  their  going  to  sleep  while 
their  competitors  worked. 

And  there  had  been  no  such  failure,  no  such  som- 
nolence in  the  du  Pont  family  since  first  Pierre 
Samuel  du  Pont's  vigilant  intelligence  had  sought, 
with  Turgot's  and  others',  to  forestall  the  French 
Revolution.  Henry  du  Pont,  whose  great  executive 
ability  had  served  to  build  up  the  plant  after  the  ex- 
plosion of  1848,  had  lived  on  through  the  Civil  War 
and  left  behind  him  sons  as  well  trained  as  himself. 
Alfred  Victor,  the  elder  brother,  who  had  been  the 
first  to  succeed  the  original  Eleuthere,  left  behind 
him  four  sons,  two  of  whom  had  been  educated,  as 
had  the  father,  and  had  gone  into  the  firm.  So  when 
the  Civil  War  was  over  and  the  great  era  of  Amer- 
ican internal  development  began,  the  firm  was  re- 
plenished with  specialized  and  educated  men  for 
every  branch  of  its  fast  diversifying  business.  There 
were  du  Ponts  for  the  laboratories,  du  Ponts  for  the 
field  of  sale  and  promotion,  du  Ponts  for  the 
search  for  raw  products,  du  Ponts  for  the  executive 
offices,  du  Ponts  for  the  relations  with  the  public. 
And  these,  each  and  all,  united  their  efforts 
in  the  full  spirit  of  the  founder  of  the  firm. 
They  acted  jointly  to  make  their  product  the  best,  to 
give  it  the  widest  market,  to  see  that  it  yielded  the 
best  profit. 

And  those  children  of  the  third  generation  had, 
at  the  end  of  the  war,  passed  their  legacy,  enlarged 
and  bettered  and  amplified,  to  the  fourth  and  fifth 
generations  which  now  began  to  follow. 

If  it  were  not  that  the  authentic  records  in  the  case 
are  so  voluminous  and  so  convincing,  one  might  think 
that  all  the  review  of  the  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont 
undertaking  and  its  history  thus  far  given  was  but 


62    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  praiseful  wording  of  a  paid  commentator.  Such 
utterances  in  subsidy  are  not  uncommon.  But  in 
this  instance  the  story  rests  on  a  foundation  that  is 
open  to  universal  inspection  and  has  often  been  sub- 
jected to  the  most  searching  examination. 


MAINSTAY    OF    AMERICAN    GOVERNMENT— UNUSUAL 
BUSINESS  CONDUCT 

THE  very  fact  that  the  du  Pont  powder  has  been 
almost  the  entire  mainstay  of  the  American 
Government  in  its  times  of  greatest  crisis  has  led  to 
the  feeling  that  it  would  be  but  human  nature  for  the 
makers  of  the  powder  to  presume  upon  their  singular 
situation  and  to  make  the  public  the  victims  of  their 
tactical  supremacy.  And,  accordingly,  both  during 
and  after  every  crisis,  charges  of  extortion  and  mon- 
opoly and  unpatriotism  have  been  freely  made 
against  the  company.  At  times  the  charges  have 
risen  to  rather  startling  heights.  Seemingly  strongly 
responsible  persons  have  initiated  them.  Evidence 
which  on  the  surface  appeared  most  convincing  had 
been  adduced.  But  always,  when  the  public  investi- 
gation has  gone  far  enough,  the  truth  has  proved  so 
favorable  to  the  accused  that  the  persons  making  the 
charges  have  themselves  been  the  first  to  withdraw 
them. 

A  few  instances  taken  at  random  from  the  public 
press  and  the  records  of  Congress  will  amply  illus- 
trate. As  lately  as  1906,  for  example — a  period  well 
within  the  so-called  muckraking  era  which  began 
with  the  presidency  of  Theodore  Roosevelt — -no  less 
a  person  than  the  president  of  a  rival  powder  com- 
pany of  some  magnitude  instituted  a  campaign  to 
break  the  relations  which  had  so  long  existed  between 
63 


64    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  Government  naval  department  and  the  du  Pont 
Powder  Works.  Writing  concerning  this  campaign, 
the  Washington  correspondent  of  the  conservative 
and  careful  New  York  Evening  Post  said: 

"It  is  unlikely  that  the  present  close  relationship  exist- 
ing between  the  du  Ponts  and  the  so-called  Powder 
Trust  and  the  Navy  Department  will  be  disturbed  so 
long  as  the  conduct  of  naval  affairs  remains  in  the  present 
hands.  The  department  is  apparently  perfectly  satisfied 
with  the  present  arrangement,  and  has  no  desire  or  inten- 
tion to  make  a  change." 

This  dispatch  was  published  at  a  time  when  the 
corrective  activities  of  President  Roosevelt  in  all 
Government  matters  were  at  their  height.  Not  a  de- 
partment or  bureau  in  the  entire  Federal  service  had 
escaped  a  shaking  up  and  cleaning  out.  The  navy 
was  a  source  of  particular  interest  to  the  Chief  Ex- 
ecutive because  of  his  former  incumbency  of  the  As- 
sistant Secretaryship  and  his  full  knowledge  of  its 
most  intimate  details.  Had  there  been  any  disposi- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  du  Pont  family  to  depart  from 
the  traditions  handed  down  to  them  by  their  progeni- 
tors and  to  sacrifice  their  duty  to  their  country  for  the 
sake  of  purely  monetary  gain,  the  President  would 
have  found  it  out  and  acted  accordingly.  That  he 
did  not  find  any  such  disposition  was  clearly  set  forth 
in  a  statement  from  a  "high-ranking  officer  of  the 
navy,"  quoted  in  connection  with  the  above  dispatch 
to  the  New  York  Evening  Post. 

Said  this  officer:  "Our  relations  with  the  du  Ponts 
are  very  satisfactory.  They  have  not  got  the  depart- 
ment in  a  position  like  the  armor-plate  people,  where 
they  can  squeeze  us.  When  we  think  that  the  price 
they  make  is  too  high,  or  when  we  find  that  we  can 


SALT-PETER  REFINERY. 
65 


66    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

cheapen  the  cost  of  production  at  Indian  Head,  we 
go  to  them  with  our  new  figures,  and  in  the  past  we 
have  always  found  them  willing  to  bring  the  prices 
down  to  what  we  considered  a  reasonable  basis  that 
affords  them  only  a  fair  profit." 

"Some  time  ago,"  continued  the  officer,  "instructions 
were  given  to  inspectors  at  the  Government  powder  fac- 
tory at  Indian  Head  to  make  a  close,  careful  tabulation 
of  the  cost  of  making  smokeless  powder.  The  depart- 
ment found  that  it  cost  about  48  cents  a  pound.  In  mak- 
ing this  estimate,  such  items  as  insurance,  deterioration 
of  the  plant,  cost  of  supervision,  interest,  and  other  items 
of  that  sort  which  commercial  manufacturers  must 
reckon  with,  were  not  taken  into  account.  Taking  these 
things  into  consideration  would  raise  the  cost  to  about  62 
cents  a  pound.  At  the  present  time,  the  department  pays 
the  so-called  Powder  Trust  75  cents  a  pound  for  smoke- 
less powder.  The  difference  between  62  cents  and  75 
cents  the  department  has  considered  a  fair  profit  for  the 
manufacturer." 

Ordinarily,  it  would  hardly  be  necessary  to  go  be- 
yond such  a  candid  and  decided  statement  to  em- 
phasize the  point.  But  it  happens  that  in  govern- 
mental affairs  it  becomes  quite  as  necessary  for  the 
legislative  branch  of  the  public  organism  to  satisfy 
itself  as  it  is  for  the  executive  branch,  even  when  the 
executive  branch  commands  such  general  confidence 
as  did  President  Roosevelt  at  that  time.  So,  not- 
withstanding the  attitude  assumed  by  the  "high  naval 
officer"  above  quoted,  Congress  entered  upon  its  own 
investigations  of  the  subject  and  arrived  at  its  own 
conclusions. 

The  conclusions  speak  for  themselves.  They  were 
somewhat  comprehensively  voiced  by  a  prominent 
member  of  the  House  of  Representatives  in  an  inter- 


68    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

view  published  in  a  cautious  and  responsible  Wash- 
ington paper. 

Said  this  member:  "The  disposition  of  men  who 
made  laws  for  the  nation  to  seek  facts  and  be  guided 
by  authentic  information  was  never  better  illustrated 
than  by  the  manner  in  which  they  went  to  the  bottom 
of  the  powder  proposition  in  connection  with  the 
naval  bill  at  the  present  session.  A  year  ago  a  great 
commotion  was  precipitated  when  the  powder  para- 
graph in  this  bill  was  reached,  and  charges  were 
freely  made  that  the  Government  was  the  victim  of 
extortion  and  unfair  treatment.  This  resulted  in 
placing  certain  limitations  on  the  purchase  of  pow- 
der, which  might  have  proved  embarrassing  to  those 
responsible  for  good  results  in  the  army  and  navy. 
Mr.  Foss,  chairman  of  the  committee  on  naval  affairs 
in  the  House,  wisely  decided,  before  the  bill  was  pre- 
pared this  year,  to  open  up  the  whole  question  and 
get  at  the  facts. 

"As  the  du  Pont  Powder  Company,  of  Wilmington, 
Delaware,  furnishes  all  the  powder  used  by  the  army  and 
the  navy,  except  that  manufactured  at  the  Government 
plants  at  Indian  Head  and  Dover,  that  company  was 
asked  to  appear  before  the  committee  and  give  such  in- 
formation and  answer  such  questions  as  might  contribute 
to  the  general  illumination  of  the  subject." 

The  Congressman  then  went  on  to  state  that  Col. 
E.  G.  Buckner,  vice-president  of  the  du  Pont  Com- 
pany, responded  and  that  the  result  was  one  of  the 
most  interesting  committee  hearings  had  in  years. 
Every  phase  of  the  manufacture  and  cost  of  powder, 
he  said,  together  with  the  policy  pursued  by  the  du 
Ponts,  was  taken  up,  thoroughly  discussed  and  much 
valuable    information    acquired.     General    Crozier 


69 


jo    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  Admiral  Mason,  chiefs  of  the  ordnance  bureaus 
of  the  army  and  navy,  were  present,  "lending  to  the 
hearing  a  dignity  and  impressiveness  quite  out  of  the 
ordinary";  and  these  eminent  authorities,  before  Col. 
Buckner  left  the  stand,  "informed  the  committee  that 
all  the  statements  he  made  were  verified  by  the  rec- 
ords of  the  respective  bureaus." 

Under  such  conditions,  when  the  naval  bill  came 
up  in  the  House  in  the  session  of  which  the  Con- 
gressman was  speaking,  the  very  members  who  had 
caused  the  storm  the  previous  year  admitted  that  the 
results  of  the  hearings  were  sufficient  to  restrain  them 
from  insisting  upon  the  restrictions  on  powder  pur- 
chases for  which  they  had  made  a  demand  in  the 
previous  session. 

"It  might  be  truthfully  said,"  added  this  Congress- 
man, "that  the  dependence  of  the  Government  on  the  du 
Ponts,  who  have  made  practically  all  the  powder  shot 
in  this  country's  wars  for  more  than  one  hundred  years, 
was  emphasized  to  such  a  degree  by  the  information 
secured  in  the  hearings  as  to  place  that  concern  in  the 
attitude  of  a  quasi-governmental  position." 

In  other  words,  following  a  most  exhaustive  and 
relentless,  and  even  at  times  bitterly  prejudiced,  ex- 
amination, Congress  found  exactly  what  the  du  Ponts 
had  learned  from  the  founder  of  the  American 
branch  of  their  family  must  be  their  guiding  prin- 
ciple in  all  their  public  relations,  namely,  that  they 
must  forever  regard  themselves  as  keepers  of  a  public 
trust,  which  they  must  no  more  violate  than  they 
would  violate  the  rights  and  privileges  of  their  own 
families. 

"Indeed,"  said  this  same  member  of  the  House  of 
Representatives,  "so  close  is  this  relationship  between  the 


72    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

du  Ponts  and  the  Government  that  officers  of  the  army 
and  navy  are  constantly  on  guard  in  the  du  Pont  factories, 
inspecting  every  step  incident  to  the  manufacture  of  ex- 
plosives." 

Not  only  this,   but  the   Congressional  committee 
found  that  so  far  from  taking  advantage  of  the  ex- 


PLANT  TRANSPORTATION  OF  DYNAMITE. 

igency  of  the  Government  in  time  of  war  by  demand- 
ing an  increased  price  for  their  output,  the  du  Ponts 
had  made  it  a  practice  wherever  possible  to  lower  the 
price.  The  committee  examined  in  particular  the 
records  of  the  Departments  of  War  and  of  the  Navy 
for  the  wars  of  1861-$  and  of  1898  and  found  that 
while  practically  every  other  contractor  who  had  pre- 
viously been  selling  munitions  of  war  to  the  Govern- 
ment advanced  the  price,  the  du  Pont  Company  alone 


A  Century  of  Success  73 

sold  at  no  greater  and,  for  several  kinds  of  material, 
sold  for  a  considerably  less  price  than  in  times  of 
peace. 

Also,  the  committee  discovered  another  incident 
which  reflected  the  character  of  the  du  Pont  plant. 
It  was  in  connection  with  the  smokeless  powder  sup- 


horse-shoe  TYPE  OF  WHEEL  MILL. 

ply  of  the  Spanish-American  War.  Smokeless  pow- 
der was  then  first  made  broad  use  of,  and  it  quickly 
developed  that  the  demand  would  far  exceed  the 
capacity  of  the  powder  plants.  To  meet  the  situa- 
tion, the  du  Pont  company  put  in  a  large  amount  of 
new  machinery  for  the  manufacture  of  the  brown 
prismatic  powder,  making  a  contract  with  the  Gov- 
ernment for  furnishing  a  certain  quantity  per  month. 


74    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

The  war,  however,  was  quickly  terminated,  and  the 
powder  was  no  longer  in  demand.  Not  only  this, 
but  it  had  proved  its  absolute  unfitness  for  martial 
service.  In  the  normal  order  of  things,  it  would 
have  been  proper  for  the  du  Pont  firm  to  insist  upon 
the  Government  fulfilling  its  contract,  or  indemnify- 


TRESTLES  FOR  CARRYING  LIQUID  NITROGLYCERIN. 

ing  the  firm  for  the  loss  involved  in  installing  the 
machinery.  But,  mindful  of  their  early  principles, 
the  firm  not  only  did  not  request  any  indemnity  but 
cheerfully  met  the  request  of  the  Government  asking 
for  the  cancellation  of  the  entire  contract. 

Apropos  of  the  discovery  of  these  facts  by  the  Con- 
gressional committee,  the  Congressman  quoted  in  the 
Washington  paper  said: 


A  Century  of  Success 


75 


"It  developed  at  this  hearing  that  while  the  price  of 
nearly  everything  else  the  Government  was  buying  was 
increasing,  the  price  of  powder  was  decreasing,  that  paid 
last  year  being  several  cents  below  the  limit  fixed  in  the 
naval  bill,  and  about  20  cents  lower  than  other  nations 
pay  for  the  same  powder. 


CONCRETE-LINED  RESERVOIR,  IN  A  DRY  COUNTRY. 

"The  statement  made  in  Congress  last  year,"  he  con- 
tinued, "that  the  price  of  powder  to  the  Government  dur- 
ing the  war  with  Spain  was  increased  by  the  du  Pont 
people,  was  disposed  of  completely  when  it  was  shown 
by  official  records  that  in  the  midst  of  that  war  the  du 
Ponts  had  voluntarily  decreased  the  price  of  powder 
three  cents  a  pound.  The  records  established  that  while 
the  company  might  have  gone  into  the  Court  of  Claims 
and  secured  $250,000  for  the  unfulfilled  part  of  the  con- 
tract made  with  the  Government  when  war  was  immi- 


y6    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

nent,  it  canceled  the  contract  of  its  own  motion  without 
making  any  demand  in  lieu  of  cancellation.  Indeed, 
from  the  facts  elicited  at  this  hearing  it  would  seem  that 
the  du  Pont  Powder  Company  has  gone  to  the  limit  of 
liberality  in  its  dealings  with  the  Government.  It  might 
have  charged  hundreds  of  thousands  of  dollars  for  in- 
ventions, formulas  and  processes  which  it  presented  to 
the  Government  without  asking  compensation.  These, 
worked  out  in  its  shops  and  laboratories,  have  resulted  in 
savings  in  the  manufacture  of  powder  and  wear  on  guns 
aggregating  millions  of  dollars." 

UNUSUAL  BUSINESS  CONDUCT 

Such  unusual  business  conduct  on  the  part  of  the 
du  Ponts,  of  course,  can  proceed  from  but  the  one 
motive  or  principle,  namely,  the  one  so  often  empha- 
sized in  this  review,  that  the  manufacture  of  explos- 
ives, differing  from  the  product  of  any  other  known 
industry,  bears  with  it  a  large  social  and  public  re- 
sponsibility. Carried  on  promiscuously  and  without 
this  sense  of  responsibility,  it  would  be  perilous  in- 
deed to  the  whole  fabric  of  government.  Funda- 
mentally, it  requires  cooperation  of  manufacturer 
and  government,  rather  than  the  seeking  of  advan- 
tage by  one  side  over  the  other.  Eleuthere  Irenee  du 
Pont  fully  appreciated  this,  and  his  successors  have 
lived  up  to  the  same  attitude. 

For  instance,  in  the  same  interview  from  which 
quotation  is  here  made,  the  Congressman  added  the 
following  striking  statement:  "It  developed  that 
when  Congress,  three  years  ago,  appropriated  $167,- 
000  to  build  a  powder  plant  at  Dover,  New  Jersey, 
the  du  Pont  company  not  only  gave  the  Government 
officials  free  access  to  all  its  plants,  but  turned  over 
their  blue-prints  to  them  so  that  when  the  factory 


A  Century  of  Success 


11 


was  completed  it  represented  every  modern  feature." 
Also,  this  Congressman  noted  that  "the  committee 
was  as  much  surprised  as  interested  when  told  that 
the  du  Pont  Company  had  recently  expended  $400,- 
000  to  obtain  a  new  powder  for  Government  use, 


COMPRESSED-AIR  LOCOMOTIVE. 

which  a  distinguished  admiral  says  is  the  best  asset 
this  nation  could  have  in  the  event  of  war." 

At  Indian  Head,  as  at  Dover,  the  du  Ponts  as- 
sumed the  same  cooperative  attitude  toward  the 
erection  of  the  Government  plant.  One  of  the  New 
York  papers  of  the  time  said: 

"A  smokeless  powder  plant  was  erected  at  Indian 
Head  in  1899  by  the  Government,  and,  instead  of  oppos- 
ing the  erection  of  that  plant,  the  du  Pont  Company 
assisted  the  officers  of  the  United  States  in  every  possible 


78    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

way,  furnishing  them  much  valuable  information  in  the 
way  of  blue-prints  and  giving  them  the  results  of  their 
experience  in  the  business,  and  doing  everything  possible 
to  make  the  venture  a  success  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
Government." 

Reference  to  records  and  documents  older  than  the 
Spanish- American  or  the  Civil  War  would  but  con- 
firm these  same  evidences  as  to  the  conduct  and  gen- 
eral attitude  of  the  du  Pont  family  and  its  enterprise. 
While  many  big  industrial  concerns  of  the  past  won- 
derful half-century  in  America  have  been  unable  to 
resist  the  temptation  to  make  the  Government  their 
prey,  the  du  Ponts  appear  never  to  have  departed 
from  their  original  principles.  They  have  worked 
consistently  and  perpetually  in  the  light  of  their  ear- 
liest instructions.  And  in  this  respect  they  stand  as 
an  object  worthy  of  general  study  in  the  modern 
business  world. 

A  few  more  specific  instances  of  later  day  illustrate 
still  more:  Until  a  few  years  ago,  the  Government 
furnished  the  company  with  alcohol  used  in  the 
manufacture  of  powder.  Under  the  process  then  in 
use,  the  alcohol  escaped  or  was  destroyed  by  evapora- 
tion. The  company  invented  a  process  which  re- 
covered the  alcohol  and  accomplished  a  saving  to  the 
Government  of  $322,000.  Later  it  gave  the  Govern- 
ment the  process  for  its  own  plants,  and  in  one  year 
the  plant  at  Indian  Head  saved  $40,000. 

The  du  Pont  Company  invented  a  process  for  re- 
working deteriorated  powder.  In  1909,  432,000 
pounds  of  Government  powder  was  reworked  by  this 
process  and  $185,000  was  saved.  It  was  estimated 
in  June,  1910,  that  on  the  1,000,000  pounds  of  de- 
teriorated powder  then  in  possession  of  the  Govern- 


A  Century  of  Success  79 

ment,  the  saving  by  this  process  would  aggregate 
$400,000. 

Another  process  invented  by  the  du  Ponts  doubled 
the  life  of  smokeless  powder.  Still  another  achieve- 
ment has  been  the  perfecting  of  the  powder  for  small 


TYPICAL  INCORPORATING  MILLS. 


arms  to  so  remarkable  a  degree  as  to  increase  the 
lease  of  life  to  the  Government  rifle  supply  of  600,- 
000  rifles  from  1500  to  13,000  rounds  each,  without 
increasing  the  cost  to  the  Government.  This  alone 
is  worth  millions. 

Few  persons,  probably,  have  any  idea  of  the  ex- 
actions the  Government  makes  of  the  company  in  re- 
turn for  the  contracts  it  secures  for  powder  supply. 
They  are  such  as  apply  to  no  other  industry  with 
which  the  Government  has  relations. 


80    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

For  example,  all  the  powder  sold  to  the  Govern- 
ment could  be  made  at  a  single  one  of  the  du  Pont 
plants,  save,  of  course,  the  extraordinary  amounts 
needed  in  time  of  war.  But,  as  a  precaution  against 
the  contingency  of  war,  the  Government  requires  all 
the  plants  of  the  company  to  be  kept  constantly  in 
commission.  It  allows  none  of  them  to  remain  idle. 
And  to  insure  against  this  idleness,  it  makes  its  pur- 
chases from  the  various  plants  instead  of  from  any 
one. 

An  idea  of  what  this  means  to  the  company  can 
be  gathered  from  the  statement  of  Col.  Buckner  be- 
fore the  Congressional  committee,  wherein  he  said 
that  if  the  Government,  not  content  with  the  public- 
spirited  attitude  of  the  company  in  the  matter  of 
prices,  should  insist  upon  going  still  further  and  de- 
mand yet  lower  prices,  the  company  would  be  obliged 
to  convert  all  of  its  plants  into  pure  commercial  fac- 
tories, wherein  only  explosives  used  in  mining,  en- 
gineering, and  the  like  would  be  produced.  To  re- 
convert the  same  factories  into  shape  for  manufacture 
of  Government  explosives  in  time  of  war  would  re- 
quire three  years! 

Thus,  as  said  above,  the  authentic  records  in  con- 
nection with  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder 
Company  take  away  the  ground  for  any  suspicion 
that  the  story  of  the  works  thus  far  told  is  drawn 
either  from  imagination  or  from  the  fulsome  regions 
of  hired  admiration.  It  is  a  story  based  on  solid 
facts.  It  is  a  story  that  sustains  itself,  however  pene- 
tratingly the  reader  may  choose  to  look  into  it. 


VI 

VICTOR  DU  PONT 

ONE  has  only  to  turn  his  thoughts  now  from  the 
material  operations  of  the  plant  to  the  person- 
nel of  some  of  the  descendants  of  the  original 
Eleuthere  to  see  how  it  comes  about  that  a  principle 
or  set  of  principles,  so  difficult  for  the  average  man 
to  maintain  as  were  those  passed  over  to  his  offspring 
by  Eleuthere,  have  lived  so  long  and  gained,  rather 
than  lost,  in  their  force. 

Take  the  case  of  Victor  du  Pont,  the  nephew  of 
Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont,  who  came  into  being  after 
the  War  of  1812  and  in  the  midst  of  the  strenuous 
economic  times  of  1828.  This  youth  passed  his  early 
days  in  the  family  home  and  received  his  education 
at  Delaware  College  and  later  at  Harvard  University 
— then  Harvard  College.  He  chose  the  legal  phases 
of  the  powder  business  for  his  field  and  clung  to  them 
until  his  death.  Said  a  Wilmington  paper  in  sum- 
ming up  his  life: 

"Few  men  have  left  or  ever  will  leave  behind  them  a 
greater  void  in  this  community  than  has  been  caused  by 
the  death  of  Victor  du  Pont.  ...  It  is  not  too  much 
to  say  that  he  won  the  confidence  of  every  man  with 
whom  he  was  brought  into  intimate  relations.  In  busi- 
ness matters  he  was  a  man  of  force,  character  and  un- 
bounded energy,  which  was  quickly  called  into  action  and 
earnestly  exerted  in  behalf  of  any  interest  which  had  a 
proper  claim  upon  him.  .  .  .  He  seldom,  if  ever,  en- 
81 


82    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

gaged  in  the  trial  of  causes  in  the  courts,  his  inclinations 
being  rather  to  perform  the  functions  of  a  counselor,  for 
which  he  was  admirably  adapted.  Adding  to  his  legal 
business  the  active  control  of  two  important  financial  in- 
stitutions, he  became,  probably  to  a  larger  extent  than 
any  other  man  in  our  community,  a  financial  adviser, 
upon  whose  legal  judgment,  financial  ability  and  saving 
common  sense  a  very  large  number  of  people  were  accus- 
tomed to  rely  implicitly." 

Probably  naturally  enough,  in  view  of  the  charac- 
ter of  secrecy  with  which  the  powder-making  inaug- 
urated by  his  great  uncle  had  been  invested  from 
the  beginning,  this  one  of  the  du  Ponts  carried  into 
the  legal  fraternity  an  amount  of  retirement  and 
seclusion  and  self-counseling  unusual  even  in  that 
profession.  The  Wilmington  paper  said  of  this 
phase  of  his  life: 

"There  were  phases  of  the  character  of  Mr.  du  Pont 
known  only  to  those  who  were  brought  into  intimate  rela- 
tions with  him,  which  can  hardly  be  publicly  commented 
upon  with  due  respect  for  the  seclusion  in  which,  during 
life,  he  almost  concealed  some  of  his  most  admirable 
qualities  of  mind  and  heart." 

In  this  brief  analysis  of  one  of  the  family  who  has 
died,  it  is  perhaps  possible  to  see  why  the  du  Pont 
Powder  Works  have  so  often  been  misunderstood  and 
unjustly  attacked.  The  essence  of  their  business  is 
secret.  Their  relations  with  the  Government  are 
secret  and  must  be  so.  It  would  not  do  either  for 
foreign  governments  or  even  for  the  people  of  the 
United  States  themselves  to  know  most  of  the  transac- 
tions which  pass  between  the  War  and  Navy  Depart- 
ments and  the  company  on  the  Brandywine.  For  in 
these  transactions  are  hidden  the  secrets  of  military 


;■■  ■'■-..     •■■.■■•. 
'  -    -      '    '      •'".'■'      . . . 

iPMPI 

. .    - 

■ '  /"£;   } 

• 

Jimm 

'"  '  4'  "*•'  yfj%f£i~<rf* 

jp»r;' 

* 

w 

.. 

'di±?:J^ 

155 

, 

t:^l             ■     ••  ■  •; 

83 


84    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  naval  conditions,  the  plans  of  military  and  naval 
organizations,  the  affairs  of  diplomacy,  and  even  in 
many  instances  the  unpublished  difficulties  of  domes- 
tic administration  within  the  nation's  own  borders. 

Such  is  the  freedom  of  the  American  press  in  pub- 
lishing Governmental  news,  that  the  knowledge  that 
a  given  powder  contract  had  been  entered  into  be- 
tween the  Government  and  the  du  Pont  works  might 
precipitate  the  very  difficulties  which  diplomacy 
would  be  trying  the  hardest  at  that  moment  to  over- 
come. Such  delicate  situations  as  existed  prior  to 
the  Spanish  War  or  as  occurred  lately  on  the  Mex- 
ican border  might  be  plunged  into  fatal  chaos  by 
the  merest  whisper  of  activity  or  contracts  for  ex- 
plosives. The  instinct  of  secretiveness  of  the  most 
careful  sort  has  therefore  had  to  become  traditional 
with  the  du  Pont  family.  This  little  tribute  to  the 
late  Victor  du  Pont  shows  how  thoroughly  instinct 
has  been  ingrained. 

Another  characteristic  which  this  one  of  the  older 
du  Ponts  possessed  was  thus  expressed  in  resolutions 
passed  by  the  Bar  Association  of  Wilmington  at  the 
time  of  his  death: 

"He  was  singularly  clear  in  apprehension,  straightfor- 
ward in  action,  and  charitable  in  judgment." 

Straightforwardness  in  action  has  been  taught  in 
each  generation  of  the  du  Ponts,  beginning  with  the 
distinguished  forebear  who  shared  so  strongly  with 
Turgot  in  the  French  Revolution.  It  has  been  the 
attribute  which  has  served  to  preserve  the  company's 
amicable  relations  with  the  Government  through  year 
after  year  and  administration  after  administration. 
Had  the  culture  of  secretiveness  been  accompanied 


A  Century  of  Success 


85 


ALFRED  DU  PONT,  PRESIDENT    1837-1850. 


86    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

by  the  culture  of  evasion,  deceit,  or  equivocation,  it 
would  have  been  impossible  for  the  patriotic  rela- 
tionship to  continue. 

Nothing,  probably,  could  more  beautifully  and 
perfectly  reflect  the  ideals  to  which  the  du  Pont 
family  are  taught  to  look  than  the  tribute  paid  to 
Victor  du  Pont  at  his  funeral,  by  the  late  Thomas  F. 
Bayard,  former  United  States  Senator  and  Ambassa- 
dor to  England.     Said  Mr.  Bayard: 

"I  have  known  him,  and  from  the  time  that  we  were 
little  children  together  until  we  were  gray-haired  men 
an  intimacy  existed  between  us  such  as,  I  think,  never 
existed  before  between  two  men  so  different.  He  was 
a  rare  man,  and  though  I  have  known  men  of  greater 
force  in  expressing  themselves,  never  have  I  known  a 
man  with  a  stricter  adherence  to  truth  than  this  simple 
gentleman. 

"In  his  family  there  have  been  warriors — men  who 
were  heroes — but  never  could  the  family  boast  of  a  more 
truthful  and  courageous  man  than  this  lawyer.  Nature 
cast  him  in  a  mould  of  refinement.  .  .  .  He  was  a  man 
with  a  singular  refinement  of  mind.  For  it  is  not  the 
boisterous  and  stormy  sea  with  its  foaming  waves  that 
reflects  the  heavens,  but  the  calm  lake  that  reflects  truly 
the  beauties  which  hang  on  high.  It  was  this  faculty  of 
retaining  the  image  of  all  things  passing  before  him  that 
enabled  him  to  guide  safely,  not  only  himself  but  those 
who  entrusted  their  affairs  to  him.  He  did  not  see 
things  with  the  distorted  eye  of  ambition,  prejudice  or 
anger.  Indeed,  I  have  never  known  a  man  so  singularly 
devoid  of  ambition. 

"  Yet  he  had  ambition.  His  ambition  was  to  live  ac- 
cording to  his  ideas  of  right,  dignity  and  modesty.  The 
object  of  his  ambition  by  self-control  he  arrived  at  and 
never  lost.  His  gifts  were  never  showy.  His  mind  and 
soul  were  serene. 


A  Century  of  Success  87 


HENRY  DU  PONT,  PRESIDENT  1850-1889. 


88    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

"He  naturally  shrank  from  the  excitement  of  the 
court;  and  several  times  when  I  asked  him  to  take  cases 
with  me  I  was  unsuccessful  in  obtaining  his  consent.  But 
his  judgment,  which  is  the  be-all  and  end-all,  was 
strengthened  by  repose  and  study  and  was  counseled  by 
the  moral  influences  of  his  nature.  Thus  this  man,  who 
seldom  raised  his  voice  in  this  or  any  other  forum,  ac- 
quired an  influence  unequaled  by  any  other  man  in  the 
community.  Toward  him  radiated  love,  respect  and  con- 
fidence. 

"This  man  was  the  fruit  of  the  union  of  noble  men 
and  women.  .  .  .  His  death  is  a  loss  to  every  man, 
woman  and  child  of  the  community  in  which  he  lived." 

It  is  of  singular  interest  that  even  in  the  practice 
of  law,  this  one  of  the  du  Ponts  lived  chiefly  in  a 
fiduciary  atmosphere.  Where  his  relatives  were  en- 
gaged in  the  more  material  work  of  powder-making 
and,  in  that  occupation,  as  previously  stated  in  this 
review,  resting  the  larger  measure  of  their  success 
upon  their  execution  of  the  confidence  reposed  in 
them  by  the  Government  and  handed  down  to  them 
by  their  predecessors,  Victor  du  Pont  was  living  his 
life  as  an  attorney  chiefly  in  the  assumption  of  func- 
tions of  trust. 

Said  another  Wilmington  paper,  speaking  of  this 
phase  of  his  career: 

"His  integrity  was  so  spontaneous,  so  natural,  so  in- 
variable that  it  came  to  be  recognized  as  his  chief  char- 
acteristic quality.  He  was  known  and  described  in  this 
way,  just  as  some  men  are  spoken  of  as  eloquent,  or  in- 
dustrious, or  painstaking.  ...  It  thus  came  about  that 
his  services  to  the  business  community  in  a  fiduciary 
capacity  attained  very  large  proportions.  Whenever  a 
private  trust  in  the  matter  of  estates,  etc.,  was  to  be 
established  his  services  were  secured,  and  the  amount  of 
property  thus  managed  by  him  ran  into  the  millions." 


A  Century  of  Success 


89 


EUGENE  DU  PONT,  PRESIDENT   1889-1902. 


90    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

"It  is  not  likely,"  continued  this  paper,  "that,  in  the 
seclusion  of  his  own  thoughts,  the  idea  ever  occurred  to 
him  of  getting  the  advantage  of  any  one.  He  accorded 
naturally,  and  as  a  matter  of  right,  to  every  one  all  that 
belonged  to  him,  and  an  opponent's  interests  were  as  safe 
in  Mr.  du  Pont's  hands  as  they  were  in  his  own.  To  be 
self-seeking  at  the  expense  of  another  was  foreign  to  his 


In  this  last  sentence  may  be  seen,  doubtless,  the 
general  spirit  of  the  du  Pont  family  which  has  always 
prevented  them  from  taking  advantage  of  the  Gov- 
ernment and  has  always  led  them  to  cooperate  with 
that  Government,  even  to  their  own  detriment. 


A  Century  of  Success 


91 


T.  C.  DU  PONT,  PRESIDENT  1902- 


VII 

A  FAMILY  OF  POWDER-MAKERS— ALWAYS  READY  FOR  A 
PUBLIC  EMERGENCY — ALFRED  VICTOR  DU  PONT — 
ALEXIS  DU  PONT — LAM  MOT  DU  PONT 

THE  history  of  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours 
Powder  Company  is  not  merely  a  history  of 
gunpowder.  It  is  a  history  of  patriotism,  achieve- 
ment, and  bravery.  The  growth  of  a  great  industry 
appeals  to  the  imagination,  but  the  devotion  to  ideals 
and  patience  with  the  everyday  task  that  sometimes 
go  to  make  that  growth  possible  are  even  more  strik- 
ing. 

We  have  seen  that  for  many  years  the  du  Ponts 
were  practically  the  only  powder-makers  in  this  coun- 
try. The  very  names  of  the  few  unlearned  makers 
who  preceded  them  have  passed  from  the  memory 
of  men.  To-day  there  are  perhaps  fifty  other  manu- 
facturers of  explosives,  but  the  du  Ponts  turn  out 
more  of  these  products  than  any  other  producer,  not 
only  in  the  United  States,  but  in  the  whole  world. 
No  industry  in  the  State  of  Delaware  exceeds  theirs  in 
size,  and  yet  if  the  founder  of  the  great  industry  could 
see  the  plant  to-day,  the  mere  magnitude  of  its  opera- 
tions would  not  appeal  to  him.  That  which  would 
arrest  his  attention  as  a  true  Frenchman  would  be 
the  development  of  his  family  and  its  continued  and 
unwavering  devotion  to  the  standards  which  he  set 
up. 

Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  undertook  the  manufac- 
92, 


A  Century  of  Success  93 

ture  of  powder  in  America  because  of  the  inferior 
quality  of  the  domestic  product.  He  brought  im- 
proved machinery  from  France  and  he  made  better 
powder  than  the  colonists  had  ever  used.  That  his 
posterity  have  followed  his  example,  there  is  a  cen- 
tury of  success  to  prove.  But  Eleuthere  Irenee  did 
more  than  make  good  powder.  As  was  said  at  the 
conclusion  of  the  last  chapter,  the  general  spirit  of 
the  family  has  always  been  such  as  to  prevent  them 
from  taking  advantage  of  the  Government.  For  this 
they  deserve  every  praise,  but  it  must  not  be  forgot- 
ten that  the  founder  of  the  industry  himself  set  them 
this  high  ideal. 

The  only  war  fought  by  this  country  with  other 
than  du  Pont  powder  was  the  Revolution.  If  Eleu- 
there had  been  making  powder  then,  the  war  might 
have  ended  sooner  in  the  Continentals'  favor.  Said 
a  historian  of  these  times:  "Food  could  be  had  if 
it  could  be  transported;  clothing  could  be  secured 
or  done  without;  but  arms  and,  above  all,  ammuni- 
tion did  not  exist  in  the  country  in  quantities  sufficient 
for  the  prosecution  of  the  war,  and  could  not  im- 
mediately be  produced  there."  Washington  wrote 
to  the  Governor  of  Rhode  Island :  "No  quantity  of 
powder,  however  small,  is  beneath  notice."  At  the 
siege  of  Boston  the  attack  was  put  off  for  nearly  a 
year  because  of  the  lack  of  ammunition. 

Only  ten  years  after  Eleuthere  set  up  his  works  in 
competition  with  British  makers,  a  step  which  he 
was  told  would  wreck  his  fortunes,  came  the  War  of 
1 81 2.  The  coast  was  so  completely  blockaded  by 
British  cruisers  that  not  only  was  the  country  unable 
to  purchase  any  powder  abroad,  but  it  was  difficult 
enough  for  the  du  Ponts  to  import  the  saltpeter  they 
needed.    This  difficulty,  however,  was  surmountedj 


94    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  the  war  was  fought  to  a  successful  conclusion 
with  du  Pont  powder. 

When  the  war  broke  out  Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont, 
as  we  have  seen,  not  only  put  his  plant  and  all  its 
resources  at  the  command  of  the  Government,  but 
his  brother,  Victor  Marie  du  Pont,  headed  one  of 
the  many  companies  which  Delaware  offered  to  her 
country.  As  the  war  centered  about  the  Southern 
States,  Delaware  was  one  of  the  chief  points  of  at- 
tack. The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Company, 
therefore,  worked  unceasingly  that  ammunition 
might  reach  both  land  and  naval  forces  with  as  little 
delay  as  possible. 

Early  in  the  war  the  du  Ponts  helped  fit  out  the 
Wasp,  which  on  her  way  to  the  West  Indies  fell 
under  the  observation  of  the  British  frigate  Frolic. 
The  little  Wasp,  with  her  thirteen  guns  and  du  Pont 
powder,  promptly  began  operations,  and  so  well  did 
she  fight  that  no  one  was  left  on  board  to  haul  down 
the  British  flag  when  the  Frolic  was  finally  compelled 
to  surrender. 

Not  only  did  the  du  Ponts  themselves  do  wonder- 
ful work  during  the  war,  but  their  employes  felt 
themselves  honored  if  they  were  allowed  to  accom- 
pany the  wagon  loads  of  ammunition  on  their  dan- 
gerous journeys  from  the  factory  to  the  quay  at  Edge- 
moor.  English,  Welsh  and  Irish  flocked  to  the  pow- 
der mills,  and  the  name  of  the  du  Ponts  was  still  so 
powerful  in  France  that  many  French  refugees  sought 
employment  with  the  company  and  worked  shoulder 
to  shoulder  with  the  stanch  Americans. 

Then  Eleuthere  furnished  the  ammunition  for  the 
expedition  of  General  Jackson  against  the  Seminole 
Indians  in  1818. 

In  the  following  year  Major  S.  J.  Long  set  out 


96    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

from  St.  Louis  to  explore  the  West,  and  to  him  the 
du  Ponts  supplied  the  black  grains  which  made  the 
trip  possible.  On  his  journey  Major  Long  discov- 
ered Pike's  Peak. 

At  about  the  same  time  the  states  of  South  America 
were  engaged  in  many  conflicts,  some  against  Eu- 
ropean aggression,  and  sympathy  with  them  was 
strong  in  this  country.  To  these  states  great  quan- 
tities of  powder  went  from  the  du  Pont  works.  Dur- 
ing this  early  period  also  the  powder  works  were 
strained  to  their  capacity  by  the  demand  of  settlers 
in  the  West  for  the  ammunition  needed  in  their  strug- 
gle with  Indians  and  wild  beasts. 

Eleuthere  Irenee  du  Pont  left  three  sons  who  car- 
ried on  the  industry:  Alfred  Victor,  Henry,  and 
Alexis  Irenee.  Alfred  Victor  was  president  from 
1837  to  1850,  and  Henry  took  charge  from  1850  to 
1889.  During  the  regime  of  these  two  presidents  the 
industry  of  powder-making  grew  from  one  of  insig- 
nificant size  to  the  greatest  of  its  kind  in  the  world, 
and  one  of  the  largest  of  any  description  whatsoever 
in  this  country.  The  uses  of  explosives  during  this 
long  period  were  extended  and  revolutionized  far 
beyond  the  possible  dreams  of  Eleuthere,  and  the 
chemical  and  mechanical  advances  in  their  manu- 
facture were  in  themselves  revolutionary.  During 
Henry  du  Pont's  administration  was  also  fought  the 
greatest  war  in  human  history,  and  the  one  which 
consumed  the  most  gunpowder. 

What  manner  of  men  were  these  who,  instead  of 
devoting  themselves  to  lives  of  idleness,  welcomed 
their  father's  trust  and  developed  it  in  so  many  di- 
rections? 


97 


98    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ALFRED  VICTOR  DU   PONT 

Alfred  Victor  du  Pont  was  born  in  France  in  1798, 
and  was  educated  at  the  Mt.  Airy  Seminary  at  Ger- 
mantown,  Pennsylvania.  He  entered  Dickinson  Col- 
lege in  1 8 14,  where  he  remained  until  18 16,  when 
that  institution  was  discontinued.  His  father  in- 
tended him  to  study  in  France,  but  the  family  for- 
tunes were  so  shattered  by  the  explosion  of  18 18  that 
this  was  not  feasible. 

Even  at  the  age  of  fourteen  Alfred  had  been  in- 
terested in  the  making  of  gunpowder,  and  could  not 
be  kept  away  from  the  dangerous  mills.  Education 
has  always  been  a  necessity  with  the  du  Ponts,  or, 
rather,  they  have  always  felt  it  to  be  a  necessity.  Not 
able  to  send  his  son  to  France  to  study  at  the  same 
wonderful  laboratories  where  he  had  worked,  Eleu- 
there  placed  young  Alfred,  who  had  already  an  ex- 
tended education  for  those  days,  under  private  tutors 
at  home  before  allowing  him  to  enter  the  business. 

Alfred  and  his  brother-in-law,  Antoine  Bidermann, 
assisted  their  father  until  his  death  in  1834.  Bider- 
mann was  in  charge  then  for  three  years  until  his 
retirement  and  Alfred  alone  remained  in  charge  until 
1850,  when  his  health  became  impaired.  From  his 
father  he  inherited  scientific  ability,  and  from  his 
grandfather  scholarly  and  literary  tastes.  Through 
the  panic  of  1837,  the  big  explosion  of  1847,  and  the 
war  with  Mexico  he  worked  steadfastly.  The  many 
explosions  which  had  taken  place  led  him  to  devise 
safeguards  and  facilities  for  preventing  accidents. 
His  life  has  been  described  as  uneventful,  but  he  was 
none  the  less  a  remarkable  man.  Besides  having 
ability  he  possessed  marked  originality.  Of  him  the 
National  Cyclopedia  of  American  Biography  has 
said: 


A  Century  of  Success  99 

"His  heart,  like  his  father's  and  his  grandfather's,  was 
full  of  liberality  and  generosity,  and  he  was  ever  promi- 
nent in  deeds  of  kindness  and  benevolence  to  the  poor 
and  afflicted." 

Henry  du  Pont,  who  followed  his  brother  Alexis 
as  president,  alone  of  the  sons  of  Eleuthere  Irenee 
lived  to  see  the  Civil  War.  Alfred  and  Alexis  both 
died  previously,  Alfred  in  1856  and  Alexis  in  1857. 

ALEXIS  DU  PONT 

Alexis  was  never  head  of  the  family  industry,  but 
associated  himself  with  it  at  an  early  age  and  worked 
at  powder-making  until  his  death.  He  was  impul- 
sive and  enthusiastic,  and  put  his  whole  soul  into  all 
he  undertook.  These  qualities  he  devoted  not  only 
to  business  pursuits,  but  to  church  work  and  temper- 
ance, in  both  of  which  causes  he  was  an  ardent 
worker. 

Alexis  died  from  injuries  received  from  an  ex- 
plosion. He  had  been  working  with  his  men  toward 
the  end  of  a  day  in  1857,  when  through  some  acci- 
dent a  spark  was  generated.  It  is  said  that  he  was 
trying  to  shift  a  heavy  box,  which  in  sliding  across 
the  floor  slipped  and  started  the  spark.  It  was  Sat- 
urday, and  only  a  few  pounds  of  powder  remained 
in  the  room,  but  that  was  enough  to  cause  a  sudden 
blaze.  Realizing  the  danger  and  calling  to  his  men, 
he  rushed  from  the  room  and  threw  himself  into  the 
millpond  close  at  hand.  Here  they  were  safe,  but 
Alexis  saw  that  sparks  were  flying  toward  another 
mill  where  several  tons  of  powder  were  stored.  Ig- 
noring the  warning  cries  of  his  laborers,  he  jumped 
out  of  the  water  and  climbed  upon  the  roof  of  the 
mill  which  he  feared  would  explode.  The  men 
handed  him  buckets  of  water,  but  he  failed  to  quench 


ioo    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  fire  and  when  the  explosion  came,  he  was  hurled 
against  a  wall  with  such  force  that  he  died  shortly  in 
great  agony. 

Explosions  are  not  as  frequent  now  as  in  the  old 
days  of  powder-making.  Science  and  invention  have 
worked  apace  to  prevent  disaster.  The  percentage 
of  accidents  in  the  use  of  explosives  has  been  reduced 
to  a  minimum,  as  we  shall  see  in  greater  detail  in 
another  connection.  Their  manufacture  is  still  no 
child's  play.  As  recently  as  1890  fourteen  persons 
were  killed  in  a  great  explosion  in  the  du  Pont  mills, 
and  in  1880  another  du  Pont  (Lammot  du  Pont) 
lost  his  life  in  the  dynamite  and  nitroglycerine  works 
at  Thompson  Point.  He  was  a  son  of  Alfred  Victor, 
who  was  president  from  1837  to  1850.  Although 
Lammot  was  never  titular  head  of  the  industry,  his 
services  to  it,  without  reference  to  his  tragic  death, 
were  perhaps  the  most  romantic  of  any  of  the  long 
line  of  du  Ponts. 

Although  Alexis  and  Lammot,  son  and  grandson 
respectively  of  the  founder,  have  been  the  only  mem- 
bers of  the  family  to  lose  their  lives  in  explosions, 
many  others  have  worked  heroically  when  danger 
threatened.  In  the  very  first  explosion  that  took 
place  in  the  little  mills  built  by  Eleuthere  the  loss 
would  have  been  greater  had  it  not  been  for  the 
courage  of  members  of  the  family.  In  181 2,  only 
four  years  after  the  modest  enterprise  had  its  start, 
there  came  a  heavy  explosion  one  Sunday  morning 
in  March.  No  thought  of  the  powder  mills  entered 
the  minds  of  the  church-going  folk  in  Wilmington. 
What  took  place  is  thus  graphically  described  by 
Muriel  Baily  in  the  New  Amstel  Magazine  for  De- 
cember, 191 1  : 

"The  earth  shook  and  the  noise  was  deafening. 


A  Century  of  Success  ioi 

The  majority  of  people  thought  that  the  steamboat 
which  plied  between  Wilmington  and  Philadelphia 
had  blown  up — it  was  called  Milnor's  boat,  and  made 
a  trip  one  way  each  day;  at  that  hour  it  would  have 
been  full  of  passengers. 

"As  no  reports  came  from  the  pier  and  no  calls 
for  help  were  reported,  many  considered  it  an  earth- 
quake and  proceeded  on  their  ways.  When,  how- 
ever, they  had  about  recovered  from  the  first  shock, 
another  and  a  heavier  explosion  occurred  and  they 
were  more  than  frightened. 

"The  third  detonation  almost  lifted  people  on  the 
streets  from  their  feet.  It  was  only  when  they  looked 
to  the  northwest  and  saw  the  vast  columns  of  smoke 
rising  in  cloud  piles,  that  they  realized  whence  the 
trouble  came.  Writers  of  the  time  say  that  the 
smoke  seemed  to  be  spangled  with  stars,  to  string 
into  strange  shapes  ready  to  fall  at  a  second's  notice 
upon  the  city  and  extinguish  it.  And  so  wonderful 
was  the  sight,  even  at  noontide,  that  many  forgot  fear 
and  gazed  in  astonishment  and  admiration. 

"The  first  real  knowledge  of  the  source  of  the  trou- 
ble came  when  a  horseman  galloped  wildly  through 
the  streets,  calling  to  the  citizens  to  raise  their  win- 
dows. A  second  rider  followed  almost  immediately, 
crying:  'Abandon  your  homes.  The  grand  maga- 
zine will  soon  explode.' 

"Friends'  Meeting  was  in  session.  When  the  call 
came  from  other  churches,  the  worshipers  hurried 
away  without  order,  but  the  Friends,  calm  and  self- 
possessed,  walked  quietly  two  by  two,  out  into  the 
street,  and  there  waited  without  emotion  for  what 
was  to  come.  There  were  few  daring  enough  to  ven- 
ture toward  the  Brandywine,  and  they  were  chiefly 
boys  and  women  who  had  loved  ones  there. 


102    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

"Strangely  enough,  E.  I.  du  Pont  had  driven  to 
Philadelphia  on  the  morning  of  the  disaster.  The 
friends  whom  he  had  been  entertaining — among  them 
Colonel  Grouchy,  of  France — were  already  in  their 
hunting  suits,  preparing  for  a  trip.  At  the  first  in- 
timation of  danger  they  rushed  to  the  works,  and 
their  courage  and  bravery  saved  many  a  life. 

"It  is  said  that  a  workman,  noticing  the  flame  on 
a  companion's  sleeve  in  one  of  the  mills,  shouted, 
'We  are  all  lost,'  and,  with  one  other  man,  had  suf- 
ficient presence  of  mind  to  recognize  the  danger, 
rush  to  the  edge  of  the  stream  and  swim  quickly  to 
a  shelter  beneath  the  bridge.  The  pounding  mill 
went  first,  the  graining  house  followed,  and  the  mag- 
azine exploded  last.  Lancaster,  forty  miles  distant, 
felt  the  detonation.  There  were  thirty-five  killed  and 
six  wounded. 

"Colonel  Grouchy  and  members  of  the  du  Pont 
family  saved  the  dry  house  and  the  refinery,  through 
a  courage  so  fine  that  it  inspired  the  others  to  the 
utmost  efforts.  If  it  had  not  been  for  their  personal 
heroism  there  would  have  been  nothing  left  for  E. 
I.  du  Pont,  on  his  return  from  Philadelphia,  but 
ruins.  As  it  was  he  found  two  acres  of  desolation. 
In  those  days  it  took  one  whole  day  to  reach  Phila- 
delphia by  steamboat,  twelve  hours  by  stage  or  pri- 
vate coach,  and  a  message  of  the  disaster  could  not 
have  reached  M.  du  Pont  earlier  than  twelve  hours 
after  its  fulfillment.  On  his  return  his  grief  was 
great.  He  granted  immediately  to  the  widows  of 
those  killed  a  $100  annuity;  Philadelphia  raised  $600 
for  the  relief  of  the  sufferers." 


A  Century  of  Success 


•03 


DU    PONT    BUILDING,    WILMINGTON,    DEL. 
Home   of   the   du   Pont   Company. 


104    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

LAMMOT  DU   PONT 

It  has  been  well  said  that  if  any  one  is  blown  up 
along  the  peaceful  Brandywine  it  cannot  help  being 
a  du  Pont,  so  many  of  them  have  lived  close  to  the 
powder  mills.  Lammot  du  Pont  had  personal  charge 
of  the  dynamite  and  nitroglycerine  works,  and  while 
engaged  there  on  the  afternoon  of  March  29,  1884, 
a  man  rushed  in  to  tell  him  that  one  of  the  mills  was 
afire  and  begged  him  to  save  himself.  But  Lammot, 
who  had  proved  his  courage  during  the  Civil  War, 
thought  of  everything  but  himself,  and  rushed  into 
rather  than  away  from  danger  and  certain  death. 

Born  in  1831,  he  prepared  for  college  at  private 
schools,  and  was  graduated  from  the  University  of 
Pennsylvania  in  1849.  Entering  the  family  pursuit 
he  gave  his  attention  to  the  chemical  branch,  and 
made  such  important  improvements  in  black  pow- 
der as  to  increase  its  explosive  power  to  the  point 
of  totally  altering  the  industry.  In  1880,  with  other 
members  of  the  family,  he  organized  the  Repauno 
Chemical  Company  for  the  production  of  Atlas  pow- 
der and  dynamite,  with  works  in  New  Jersey  and 
general  offices  in  Philadelphia.  Of  this  separate 
company  he  was  president  until  his  death.  Valued 
as  his  services  were  in  improving  the  product,  it  is 
but  human  nature  that  Lammot  should  be  longest 
remembered  for  qualities,  perhaps  no  more  worthy 
than  that  of  industrious  application  of  talent  to  busi- 
ness affairs,  but  certainly  more  picturesque.  I  refer 
to  his  signal  bravery  and  daring  feats  during  the 
Civil  War. 

When  the  war  broke  out  Lammot  was  barely  thirty 
years  old.  But  he,  as  well  as  General  Henry  du 
Pont  and  other  members  of  the  family,  were  in  con- 


A  Century  of  Success  105 

stant  consultation  with  President  Lincoln,  members 
of  the  cabinet  and  high  officers  of  the  army  and  navy. 
Many  months  before  war  was  declared  Lincoln  called 
them  to  Washington,  and  in  i860  Lammot,  still  in 
the  twenties,  was  given  one  of  the  most  important 
missions  a  man  could  have.  He  had  predicted  a 
probable  exhaustion  of  saltpeter,  and  as  England 
was  the  one  place  to  get  more,  he  was  despatched 
thither  with  the  proper  credentials  to  bankers  and 
others. 

The  importance  of  the  mission  in  determining  the 
issue  of  war  could  hardly  be  exaggerated,  for  it  later 
developed  that  the  lack  of  saltpeter  was  one  of  the 
chief  handicaps  under  which  the  South  suffered. 

Lammot  had  arranged  that  $500,000  in  gold  be 
shipped  to  him  by  the  next  steamer.  Upon  arriving 
in  England  he  at  once  bought  up  all  the  available 
supply  of  saltpeter,  and  in  a  few  days  the  brokers 
were  delivering  it  in  great  quantities.  They  urged 
him  for  prompt  payment,  especially  as  his  purchases 
had  driven  up  the  price;  they  thought  that  in  the 
event  of  his  being  unable  to  pay  and  thus  forced  to 
cancel  the  orders,  they  could  sell  at  a  big  profit.  He 
appealed  to  the  Barings  and  to  Brown,  Shipley  & 
Co.,  for  funds,  but  they  would  not  advance  him  so 
large  a  sum.  Finally  he  called  upon  Peabody  & 
Co.,  and  this  firm  was  willing  to  advance  the  money 
if  he  could  prove  his  identity.  Even  Brown,  Shipley 
&  Co.,  to  whom  he  had  letters,  were  not  willing  at 
first  to  affirm  they  knew  him.  But  he  made  such  an 
earnest  plea,  that  at  last  the  bankers  gave  in  and  al- 
lowed him  the  necessary  cash.  He  paid  for  the  salt- 
peter and  bought  more,  but  his  anxiety  may  be  im- 
agined when  the  second  ship  arrived  without  bringing 
the  $500,000. 


106    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

The  third  ship  brought  the  gold,  but  meanwhile 
the  London  Times  had  come  out  in  opposition  to  the 
shipment.  As  soon  as  Lammot  knew  of  this  he  char- 
tered a  ship  and  gathered  together  a  crew,  consisting 
partly  of  men  from  vessels  captured  by  the  Confed- 
erate cruiser  Alabama.  Just  as  the  last  of  the  big 
cargo  was  being  placed  on  board,  a  customs  officer 
reached  the  wharf  with  orders  to  stop  his  sailing. 

Lammot  du  Pont  was  equal  to  the  occasion.  He 
demanded  the  officer's  authority  and  agreed  to  go 
with  him  to  the  customs  house  to  see  his  credentials, 
although  he  probably  knew  well  enough  that  the  Brit- 
ish government  had  decided  not  to  allow  so  much  salt- 
peter to  leave  the  country.  Before  accompanying 
the  officer  he  whispered  to  the  captain :  "Load  every 
pound  of  saltpeter  as  quickly  as  possible,  and  be 
ready  to  sail  at  a  moment's  notice." 

On  their  way  to  the  custom  house,  Lammot  induced 
the  customs  officer  to  have  luncheon  with  him,  and 
so  much  time  was  consumed  in  jollity,  that  the  cap- 
tain had  an  opportunity  to  get  every  pound  of  the 
precious  cargo  on  board.  Lammot  found  when  he 
reached  the  custom  house  that  the  order  to  stop  the 
shipment  came  from  Lord  Palmerston,  the  British 
premier,  but  none  the  less  when  he  returned  to  the 
ship,  he  gave  instructions  to  sail  on  the  high  tide,  at 
four  the  next  morning.  When  the  time  for  sailing 
arrived,  a  file  of  redcoats  was  on  the  wharf  and,  de- 
spite his  strategy,  Lammot  could  not  get  his  shipful 
of  saltpeter  out  of  port. 

He  at  once  returned  to  the  United  States  and  went 
to  see  Lincoln.  Boldly  he  suggested  that  the  Ameri- 
can Government  threaten  war  with  England  if  per- 
mission to  ship  the  saltpeter  was  not  given.  Secre- 
tary Seward  gave  him  the  necessary  credentials,  and 
he  turned  about  and  sailed  for  England  again. 


A  Century  of  Success 


107 


When  he  called  upon  Lord  Palmerston  the  pre- 
mier refused  to  see  him,  and  four  times  he  called 
only  to  receive  the  same  rebuff.  The  last  time  he 
rushed  past  the  attendant,  who  tried  in  vain  to  bar  his 
passage,  walked  quickly  into  the  premier's  private  of- 


AMERICAN   TROOPS   GUARDING  DU  PONT  POWDER  WORKS  ON  THE   BRANDYWINE, 
NEAR  WILMINGTON,  DEL.,  DURING  THE  WAR  OF  1812. 

flee  and  laid  his  card  upon  the  desk.  Lord  Palmers- 
ton  made  the  best  of  the  situation,  and  when  the  Amer- 
ican stated  briefly  that  he  must  have  permission  to 
ship  the  saltpeter,  replied  that  he  would  call  a  con- 
ference and  inform  du  Pont  of  the  decision  later  in 
the  afternoon.  When  Lammot  returned  he  was  told 
that  permission  could  not  be  granted,  whereupon  he 
gave  the  prime  minister  to  understand  that  war  was 
the  only  alternative,  and  stated  that  he  would  sail  for 
America  on  the  next  day. 

Later  in  the  evening,  just  as  he  was  finishing  his 
dinner  at  Morley's  Hotel,  Lord  Palmerston  called 


108    The  E.  I.  du  Pqnt  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

on  him  in  person.  The  American  did  not  lose  his 
coolness  at  this  distinction,  and  was  not  satisfied  when 
the  premier  said  a  permit  would  be  granted  next  day, 
but  demanded  one  on  the  spot.  The  prime  minister 
left  his  carriage,  walked  into  the  hotel  and  wrote  out 
a  permit,  at  the  same  time  telling  him  that  he  "was 
at  liberty  to  state  confidentially  to  Mr.  Lincoln  that 
scarcely  for  any  cause  would  England  at  that  period 
go  to  war  with  America." 

Who  can  doubt  that  the  intrepid  behavior  of  one 
member  of  the  powder-making  family  had  no  little  to 
do  with  this  fortunate  decision? 

The  purchase  of  saltpeter  in  England  is  the  most 
famous  of  Lammot  du  Pont's  adventures,  but  an 
even  more  picturesque,  although  less  important,  feat 
was  his  blockade  running  of  British  frigates  during 
the  Crimean  War.  During  the  siege  of  Sebastopol 
the  Russian  government  ran  short  of  powder,  and 
ordered  a  shipload  from  the  du  Ponts.  The  Eng- 
lish government  heard  of  the  order  and  sent  frigates 
to  lie  off  the  Chesapeake  and  prevent  shipment.  But 
Lammot,  although  only  twenty-five  years  old  at  the 
time,  took  charge  of  the  transport,  outwitted  the 
frigates  and  got  away  without  trouble. 

Lammot  du  Pont  raised  a  company  of  volunteers 
during  the  Civil  War,  but  his  services  to  the  Union 
cause  were  primarily  those  of  one  who  supplied  to 
the  best  of  his  ability  the  one  all-important  munition 
of  war. 

On  the  actual  field  of  battle  there  were  no  lack  of 
du  Ponts.  Samuel  Francis  du  Pont  and  Henry  Al- 
gernon du  Pont  were  never  associated  with  their  kins- 
folk in  the  powder  industry,  but  they  served  their 
country  with  the  same  steadfast  patriotism.  Samuel 
Francis  was  for  nearly  fifty  years  in  the  naval  serv- 


A  Century  of  Success  109 

ice.  More  than  half  of  that  time  he  actually  spent 
at  sea.  He  was  one  of  the  country's  greatest  naval 
commanders,  and  won  many  of  the  most  famous  of 
the  sea  victories  of  the  Civil  War.  His  name  is  per- 
petuated in  Washington,  D.C.,  where  Du  Pont  Cir- 
cle was  named  after  him  by  act  of  Congress,  and  by 
Fort  du  Pont  at  Delaware  City. 

No  less  distinguished  were  the  services  of  United 
States  Senator  Henry  A.  du  Pont  in  the  other  branch 
of  the  nation's  fighting  arm.  He  fought  in  many 
battles  of  the  war,  and  was  promoted  and  decorated 
for  gallant  and  meritorious  service.  Congress  gave 
him  a  medal  of  honor  for  "most  distinguished  gal- 
lantry and  voluntary  exposure  to  the  enemy's  fire 
at  a  critical  moment"  during  the  battle  of  Cedar 
Creek. 

Thus  the  du  Ponts  worked  for  the  cause  they  be- 
lieved the  most  vital  period  of  their  country's  career, 
On  sea  and  land,  in  the  factory  and  by  diplomacy  of 
the  highest  order. 


VIII 

HENRY  DU  PONT 

FEW  men  have  seen  such  tremendous  strides  in 
an  industry  over  which  they  presided  as  did 
Henry  du  Pont,  second  son  of  Eleuthere,  and  presi- 
dent of  the  company  from  1850  to  1889.  During 
the  later  years  of  Alfred  du  Pont's  management  there 
had  been  a  rapid  development  in  the  building  of 
canals  and  mines.  This  required  blasting  powder, 
which  at  first  was  merely  an  inferior  grade  of  ex- 
plosive. But  in  1856  the  introduction  of  sodium  ni- 
trate so  cheapened  the  process  of  manufacture  that 
it  was  possible  to  introduce  blasting  powder  as  it  is 
known  to-day. 

Then  came  the  Civil  War  with  its  enormous  de- 
mands for  explosives.  In  i860  General  Rodman  be- 
gan his  experiments,  which  altered  the  whole  course 
of  powder-making  for  the  Government.  At  about 
the  same  time  the  process  for  making  high  explosives 
was  discovered  and  the  development  has  gone  on  ever 
since. 

Following  the  Civil  War  there  ensued  a  period 
of  industrial  expansion,  such  as  the  building  of  rail- 
roads, tunnels,  giant  office  structures  and  so  on,  and 
for  all  this  growth  the  proper  explosives  had  to  be 
provided.  All  this  took  place  during  Henry  du 
Pont's  presidency. 

But  Henry  du  Pont  was  more  than  a  very  success- 
ful  powder-maker.     He   fought  the  battles  of  his 


A  Century  of  Success  hi 

country  as  well  as  those  of  a  business  career.  Born 
at  the  Eleutheran  Mills,  near  Wilmington,  Delaware, 
August  8,  1812,  he  received  his  early  education  at 
the  same  school  as  his  elder  brother,  the  Mt.  Airy 
Seminary,  Germantown,  Pa.  In  1829  he  was  ap- 
pointed a  cadet  at  the  West  Point  Military  Academy, 
from  which  he  was  graduated  in  1833.  As  brevet 
second-lieutenant  of  the  Fourth  United  States  Ar- 
tillery he  saw  service  in  the  Creek  Indian  territory, 
but  in  1834  ne  was  called  to  take  up  the  equally  seri- 
ous duties  of  powder-making. 

After  the  breaking  out  of  the  Civil  War,  Henry 
du  Pont  not  only  supplied  the  Union  armies  with 
powder,  but  he  was  an  ardent  political  supporter  of 
President  Lincoln  and  of  the  Union  cause.  Al- 
though he  had  been  a  Whig,  he  became  the  leader 
of  the  Delaware  Republicans  and  was  named  by  them 
for  presidential  elector  in  1868,  1876,  1880,  1884,  and 
1888.  He  regarded  political  work  as  a  patriotic 
duty,  and  actually  filled  the  humble  position  of  chal- 
lenger at  the  polls,  as  well  as  inspector  of  elections, 
for  fully  forty  years. 

Not  only  were  the  interests  of  his  state  imperiled 
in  the  war,  but  the  industry  which  his  ancestors 
built  up  and  upon  which  his  life  work  was  spent  was 
more  imperiled  than  anything  else  in  the  state.  Upon 
the  safety  and  continued  operation  of  that  industry 
depended  the  success  of  the  Union  arms.  It  has  been 
said  that  the  requirements  of  the  Government  for 
powder  during  the  Civil  War  were  not  what  they 
would  be  in  a  war  of  similar  magnitude  in  these  days 
of  high  explosives  and  improved  guns.  But  the 
strain  upon  the  du  Pont  works  was  none  the  less  se- 
vere. For  one  thing  there  was  serious  lack  of  skilled 
labor  when  the  war  broke  out. 


ii2    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

But  most  important  was  the  necessity  of  unceasing 
vigilance.  Danger  of  spies  and  lawless  persons  hov- 
ering about,  had  ever  to  be  guarded  against.  Many 
disastrous  explosions  took  place,  whether  because  the 
enemy  had  secretly  reached  the  mills,  or  because  of 
the  strain  put  upon  the  works,  no  one  ever  knew. 

Early  in  1862  there  were  Confederate  raids  into 
Maryland,  and  it  was  feared  that  an  attempt  might 
be  made  to  attack  the  powder  works.  Just  before 
the  battle  of  Gettysburg,  a  plan  was  formed  to  de- 
stroy the  mills  of  the  du  Ponts  nearest  to  the  Con- 
federate lines.  But  the  owners  received  warning  and 
were  prepared  to  blow  up  the  buildings  themselves, 
rather  than  allow  them  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  the 
enemy.  At  all  times  it  was  felt  that  the  home  of  the 
powder  industry  was  uncomfortably  close  to  the  seat 
of  warfare. 

If  the  du  Ponts  had  sympathized  with  the  South- 
ern cause,  who  can  say  how  differently  the  war  might 
have  turned  out?  But  there  was  never  a  question 
concerning  the  loyalty  of  the  country's  powder-mak- 
ers. For  more  than  twenty  years  Henry  du  Pont  was 
in  the  military  service  of  his  state,  and  this  meant 
more  than  merely  wearing  decorative  titles.  He  had 
been  aide-de-camp  to  Governor  Cooper  of  Delaware 
in  1 841,  and  from  1846  to  1861  he  was  adjutant- gen- 
eral of  the  state.  In  May,  1861,  he  was  appointed 
by  Governor  Burton  major-general  of  the  Delaware 
forces,  but  he  accepted  the  position  only  with  the 
stipulation  that  his  control  of  these  forces  should  be 
absolute,  and  not  subject  to  interferences  of  any  kind. 

General  Henry  du  Pont's  first  order  required  every 
man  in  the  service  to  take  the  oath  of  allegiance  to 
the  United  States  Government,  or  to  surrender  his 
arms.     This  meant  the  immediate  elimination  of  the 


A  Century  of  Success  113 

element  which  secretly  favored  the  Confederate  cause. 
His  action  was  interfered  with  by  certain  state  au- 
thorities, but  he  finally  sustained  his  position  by  pro- 
curing from  General  Dix,  the  Federal  commander 
at  Baltimore,  a  force  of  troops.  From  that  day  forth 
there  was  no  question  as  to  where  the  state  of  Dela- 
ware stood  in  the  great  conflict. 

Such  are  the  bare  outlines  of  General  Henry  du 
Pont's  life.  These  are  his  larger  achievements  in  the 
field  of  statesmanship  and  industry.  But  great  as 
they  were,  the  man  himself  will  be  longer  remem- 
bered for  his  personality  and  character.  Fifty  years 
after  a  great  event,  it  is  hard  to  fire  the  imagination 
with  the  narration  of  broad  and  general  achievements, 
no  matter  how  noble  they  may  have  been.  But  the 
little  incidents  and  stories,  these  are  what  live.  Gen- 
eral Henry  du  Pont's  life  was  filled  with  just  such  in- 
cidents and  characteristics  as  ensure  long  and  affec- 
tionate remembrance  in  the  minds  of  other  men. 

To  reconstruct  as  vividly  as  we  can  this  remarkable 
personality  is  justified,  not  only  on  the  ground  of  his- 
torical narrative  but  even  more  because  of  the  interest 
and  value  which  attach  to  the  story  of  any  strong  and 
distinctive  nature. 


IX 

THE  STORY  OF  DYNAMITE — THE  NEW  FARM  HAND 

BEFORE  dwelling  further  upon  the  lives  of  those 
who  by  their  industry  and  patriotism  made  pos- 
sible the  production  of  powder  when  it  was  most 
needed,  let  us  turn  for  a  while  from  the  service  of 
the  men  to  that  of  the  product  itself.  There  will  be 
no  one  to  dispute  that  the  country  needed  powder  in 
the  wars  of  1812  and  1898,  and  if  there  are  some  who 
believe  the  cause  which  the  du  Ponts  supported  in 
1 86 1  was  not  the  right  one,  they  will  surely  admit 
that  it  would  have  been  a  fortunate  thing  for  their 
own  lost  cause  if  the  powder-makers  had  sided  dif- 
ferently. Nor  will  there  be  any  one  to  deny  the 
value  to  this  country  of  having  had  a  supply  of  good 
powder  during  those  long  years  when  bold  men  pain- 
fully and  slowly  fought  their  way  against  hostile 
tribes  of  Indians  and  wild  beasts,  toward  the  far 
West. 

But  there  are  men  who  object  to  war  on  any  ground. 
It  is  the  steadfast  purpose  of  this  enlightened  age  to 
do  away  with  warfare.  Peace  conferences  are  being 
held  with  increasing  regularity.  The  reduction  of 
armaments  is  discussed  in  and  out  of  season.  A  prize 
is  given  yearly  to  the  person  who  has  worked  most 
or  best  for  the  fraternization  of  nations,  the  abolition 
or  reduction  of  standing  armies,  and  the  calling  in 
and  propagating  of  peace  congresses. 

Probably  there  is  no  greater  force  which  makes 


A  Century  of  Success 


"5 


for  peace  than  the  invention  of  high  and  powerful 
explosives,  for  warfare  is  being  rendered  so  deadly 
that  men  realize  more  and  more  the  necessity  of 
peace.  Indeed,  the  peace  prize  spoken  of  above  is 
given  yearly  from  the  bequest  of  Alfred  B.  Nobel, 


SUBSOILING    WITH    DYNAMITE— LIGHTING    THE    FUSE. 

the  Swedish  inventor  of  dynamite  and  other  high 
explosives,  who  died  in  1896,  leaving  his  fortune 
of  $9,000,000  to  the  founding  of  a  fund,  the  in- 
terest upon  which  should  yearly  be  distributed  to 
those  who  had  most  contributed  to  the  good  of  hu- 
manity. 

Thus  the  very  manufacturers  of  explosives  are 
working  to  make  war  impossible.  It  cannot  be  re- 
peated too  often  that  explosives  are  primarily  con- 
structive, rather  than  destructive.  At  the  present 
time  not  more  than  10  per  cent  of  the  du  Pont  output 


n6 


ii7 


1 1 8    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

is  used  for  military  purposes.  By  far  the  greater 
bulk  of  all  explosives  are  used  for  strictly  commercial 
requirements.  Attention  has  already  been  called  to 
the  fact  that  our  railroads,  tunnels,  mines  and  great 
buildings  would  have  been  impossible  without  ex- 
plosives. There  are  no  greater  civilizing  forces  than 
dynamite  and  blasting  powder. 

Railroads  that  cross  yawning  chasms,  bore  through 
mountains,  and  wind  around  precipitous  cliffs,  would 
have  never  been  constructed  if  the  manufacturers  of 
explosives  had  not  kept  abreast  of  every  scientific 
discovery.  The  Panama  and  Sault  Ste  Marie  canals, 
the  tunnels  under  New  York  City,  the  coal,  iron,  sil- 
ver, gold,  tin,  lead  and  copper  mines,  the  quarrying 
of  stone  for  purposes  of  fluxing  minerals,  making  ce- 
ment, paving  streets  and  building  houses  would  have 
all  been  either  impossible,  or  incapable  of  any  but  the 
slowest  and  most  painful  accomplishments,  without 
the  use  of  explosives.  Such  are  some  of  the  achieve- 
ments which  may  be  traced  in  no  small  degree  to  the 
high  standards  and  efficiency  of  the  du  Ponts. 

To  appreciate  just  what  has  been  done  for  this 
country  by  the  use  of  explosives,  and  how  they  may 
be  made  still  more  useful  as  time  goes  on,  we  must 
have  a  clearer  idea  as  to  just  what  an  explosive  is. 
The  well-known  composition  of  ordinary  gunpowder 
has  been  referred  to,  and  various  steps  in  the  ad- 
vancing science  of  manufacturing  other  explosives 
have  been  related.  The  theory  of  explosives  is  sim- 
ple enough,  and  if  it  is  borne  in  mind,  much  in  their 
use  which  would  otherwise  be  difficult  to  explain  is 
easy  to  understand. 

Explosives  are  solids  or  liquids  which  can  be 
changed  almost  instantaneously  by  a  spark,  great 
heat,  or  powerful  shock  into  gases  having  many  hun- 


120    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

dred  times  the  volume  of  the  explosive  in  its  original 
form.  Coal  and  wood  are  changed  into  a  large  vol- 
ume of  gas  (steam)  by  burning,  but  the  process  is 
slow;  and  water  is  changed  into  a  large  volume  of 
gas  (steam)  by  heating,  but  also  slowly.  Explosives 
differ  from  these  other  substances  by  the  rapidity  of 
the  change. 

When  a  small  volume  of  explosive  suddenly  ex- 
pands into  a  very  large  volume  of  gas,  this  gas  exerts 
a  strong  pushing  force  in  every  direction  because  it 
requires  a  much  larger  space  than  the  explosive 
which  produced  it.  If  the  explosive  is  confined 
within  a  narrow  space,  just  large  enough  to  hold  it, 
that  is,  if  it  is  closely  confined  before  it  is  exploded, 
the  gas  in  escaping  to  the  open  forces  out  and  carries 
along  with  it  the  material  which  shuts  it  in.  The 
efficiency  of  an  explosive  depends  chiefly  upon  the 
proper  putting  together  of  a  few  comparatively  sim- 
ple ingredients,  and  success  in  their  manufacture  de- 
pends primarily  upon  an  eager,  systematic,  and  con- 
tinual search  for  new  and  better  ways  of  doing  the 
work. 

From  this  simple  explanation  of  the  theory  of  ex- 
plosives two  deductions  may  easily  be  drawn.  If  the 
object  is  to  remove  material,  it  may  readily  be  seen 
that  the  uses  of  explosives  must  constantly  expand  as 
science  and  engineering  find  more  materials  to  deal 
with.  At  one  time  no  man  would  have  been  bold 
enough  to  imagine  that  he  could  bore  through  a 
mountain  five  to  ten  miles  long.  In  just  the  same 
way  men  may  do  things  to  Mother  Earth  in  years  to 
come  which  no  one  dreams  of  to-day.  In  the  sec- 
ond place  it  follows  that  chemistry  would  continue 
to  devise  new  and  improved  explosives,  and  this  is 
just  what  is  taking  place.     The  object  being  to  re- 


A  Century  of  Success 


121 


move  material  at  reduced  cost,  the  constant  tendency 
of  the  explosive  industry  is  toward  providing  a  ma- 
terial which  will  perform  the  work  at  a  less  cost 
than  the  method  which  it  supersedes. 


BLASTING  A  STUMP— "A  TOUGH   CUSTOMER  EASILY  REMOVED." 

There  is  a  Greek  word  "dynamis"  which  means 
"power."  Thus  dynamite  aptly  derives  its  name. 
It  has  been  explained  that  dynamite  is  made  from 
nitro-glycerin,  a  very  high  and  dangerous  explosive, 
together  with  wood  pulp,  earth  or  other  ingredients, 
the  resulting  admixture  greatly  reducing  the  danger 
but  not  the  power  of  the  compound  as  compared  with 
pure  nitro-glycerin. 

There  is  a  popular  misconception  of  dynamite  in 
the  public  mind.  Newspapers  in  reporting  outrages 
such  as  bomb  throwing  by  anarchists,  demented  per- 
sons, and  blackmailers,  safe  cracking  by  burglars,  and 


122    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

other  intentional  efforts  to  destroy  life  or  property 
by  the  use  of  high  explosives,  incorrectly  report  them 
as  perpetrated  with  dynamite.  There  is  also  a  ten- 
dency in  the  press  to  call  every  high  explosive  by  the 


. 

A  FIELD  OF  STUMPS   PROPERLY  TREATED. 

name  dynamite.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  safe  breakers 
and  bomb  throwers  very  rarely  use  dynamite  cart- 
ridges; their  tool  or  weapon  is  pure  nitro-glycerin. 
Dynamite  would  not  do  for  this  sort  of  work,  as  it  is 
too  difficult  to  explode.  The  confusion  of  the  two 
substances  in  the  public  mind  gives  dynamite  a  bad 
name  which  it  does  not  deserve. 

It  is  said  that  nearly  half  a  million  persons  use 
dynamite  every  day.  These  include  miners,  blasters 
employed  on  road  and  railroad  construction,  quarry- 
men,  farmers,  and  many  others.     A  record  of  all  ac- 


A  Century  of  Success 


23 


cidents  to  all  users  of  dynamite  in  the  year  1910 
shows  casualties  of  less  than  one-eighth  of  one  per 
cent,  and  most  of  these  are  known  to  have  been 
caused  by  failure  to  observe  a  few  simple  precautions. 


.                             .           .                    .                       "•    ;■ 

'-;..*' 

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s:-?^™i^inS^s^sr 

- 

j 

THE  SAME  FIELD  EIGHT  MONTHS  LATER   (NOTE  THE   SPLENDID   CROP  OF  CELERY). 

Of  course,  dynamite  should  be  used  with  great  care 
and  by  responsible  persons  only,  but  such  persons 
can  use  and  handle  it  with  surely  as  much  safety  as 
they  handle  gasoline,  coal  oil  or  matches.  A  few 
rules  as  to  its  use  having  once  been  mastered,  dyna- 
mite can  be  put  to  work  almost  as  safely  as  steam. 
The  reason  so  many  people  fear  dynamite  is  because 
it  is  something  they  do  not  understand,  they  are  not 
accustomed  to  handling  or  using  it,  and  they  know  its 
highly  concentrated  power. 

Those  who  have  not  read  Robert  Louis  Steven- 
son's fantastic  tale,  "The  Dynamiter,"  will  do  well 


124    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

to  amuse  themselves  with  it.  Time  and  again  the 
leader  of  a  desperate  band  of  anarchists,  one  Zero 
by  name,  attempts  to  blow  up  London  by  planting 
dynamite  cartridges,  but  the  explosions  do  not  take 
place  owing  to  various  defects  in  the  arrangements. 
Finally,  one  cartridge  does  go  off,  but  not  until  the 
author  has  provoked  much  mirth  over  the  many 
fiascos. 

The  story  is  true  to  life  in  that  the  explosiveness 
of  dynamite  depends  altogether  upon  having  prop- 
erly made  detonators.  It  is  the  detonator  that  is  sen- 
sitive and  sets  off  the  main  explosive.  Dynamite  is 
not  so  sensitive  to  shock  that  it  is  likely  to  explode 
from  a  jar  or  even  from  dropping  it  a  considerable 
distance.  It  must  have  a  hard,  sharp  shock,  and  this 
the  little  detonator  gives  it.  These  detonators  do  re- 
quire careful  handling,  and  must  be  kept  away  from 
the  explosive  until  the  blast  is  to  be  set  off. 

Blasting  explosives  are  divided  into  two  classes: 
"Low  Explosives,"  or  blasting  powders,  which  are 
exploded  by  a  spark,  and  "High  Explosives,"  includ- 
ing dynamites,  which  are  set  off  by  a  hard,  sharp 
shock.  Blasting  powder  is  used  for  many  kinds  of 
coal  mining,  quarry  and  general  excavating,  but  is 
not  generally  applicable  to  any  blasting  about  the 
farm  or  many  other  important  purposes.  It  is  used 
in  such  vast  quantities,  however,  in  mining  operations 
that  in  1909  there  were  produced  in  the  United  States 
9>339>°87  kegs  of  25  pounds  each,  a  quantity  far  in 
excess  of  any  other  class  of  explosive. 

Nothing  will  so  clearly  disclose  the  advance  in  the 
manufacture  and  use  of  explosives,  and  especially  of 
dynamite,  as  the  figures  of  the  Census  Bureau.  From 
1904  to  1909  the  quantity  of  dynamite  produced  in 
this  country  increased  35  per  cent,  or  from  130,920,- 


125 


126    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

829  pounds  in  1904  to  177,155,851  pounds  in  1909.  A 
graphic  idea  of  the  increase  in  the  use  of  explosives 
for  commercial  purposes  during  the  last  twenty  years 
may  be  gathered  from  the  census  figures. 

PRODUCTION   OF    EXPLOSIVES    IN    1904   AND    I909 

1904  !9°9 

Explosives                         Pounds  Pounds 

Dynamite    130,920,829  177,155,851 

Nitro-glycerin 7>935>936  28,913,253 

Blasting  powder 8,217,448  1        9>339i087  1 

Gunpowder    10,383,944  12,862,700 

Permissible  explosives    ...       9,607,448 

Other   explosives    6,303,825  7,464,825 

PRODUCTION   OF   DYNAMITE    IN    1909,    1904,    I9OO,    AND 
189O 

Pounds 

J909  i77>i55>85i 

1904 138,920,829 

1900 85,846,456 

1890  30,626,738 

The  newest,  most  picturesque,  and  one  of  the  most 
promising  uses  of  dynamite  is  on  the  farm.  The 
little  cartridges  have  won  for  themselves  the  name 
of  "The  New  Farm  Hand,"  and  they  have  been  de- 
clared by  some  as  of  greater  value  than  irrigation. 
So  fast  is  their  use  growing  in  lessening  the  labor  of 
farm  work  that  in  a  single  six  months'  time  the  du 
Pont  Company  received  inquiries  from  thirty  thou- 
sand farmers  in  regard  to  the  use  of  dynamite. 

Explosives  have  long  been  used  in  blasting  out 
stumps,  but  it  is  not  so  generally  well  known  that  an 

1  Number  of  kegs  of  25  pounds  each. 


A  Century  of  Success  127 

entire  tree  can  be  felled  in  the  same  way.  The  blast 
lifts  the  tree  straight  up  a  foot  or  so;  then  it  falls, 
generally  with  the  wind.  When  stumps  are  blasted 
out,  whole  or  nearly  so,  it  is  often  necessary  to  split 
them  up.  This  can  readily  be  done  by  putting  dyna- 
mite into  auger  holes.  It  is  even  possible  by  using 
blasting  powder  to  split  a  log  up  as  smoothly  and 
evenly  as  if  saws  or  wedges  were  used,  and  this 
method  is,  of  course,  much  easier  and  quicker  than 
any  other. 

When  properly  used  dynamite  will  excavate 
ditches,  cleaning  them  out  to  grade,  giving  the  sides 
the  correct  slope  and  spreading  the  earth  excavated 
over  the  land  some  distance  away.  In  the  same 
manner  much  valuable  land  can  be  saved  by  blasting 
channels  to  straighten  and  shorten  the  course  of 
creeks  and  streams.  It  is  not  necessary  in  this  work 
to  blast  a  large  ditch  or  channel,  for  if  the  current 
is  once  started  through  a  small  one  it  will  soon  wash 
it  out  to  the  proper  size.  In  a  fraction  of  a  second 
it  is  possible  to  excavate  a  ditch  1,000  feet  long,  6 
feet  deep,  and  12  feet  wide  without  having  to  re- 
shovel  any  dirt. 

Blasting  a  ditch  is  a  very  simple  matter  and  the 
result  is  a  nice,  clean  ditch  of  the  required  depth  and 
width,  the  earth  being  spread  evenly  over  the  ground, 
along  the  banks;  turning  in  the  water  clears  away 
what  little  of  the  dirt  may  have  fallen  back  into  the 
trench  after  the  blast. 

The  cost  of  ditching  with  dynamite  averages  from 
9  to  11  cents  per  cubic  yard,  compared  with  an  aver- 
age cost  of  25  cents  per  yard  when  the  work  is  done 
with  pick  and  shovel.  Swamps  and  ponds,  except 
where  they  are  close  to  rivers,  lakes,  or  the  ocean,  are 
caused  by  spring  or  surface  water  collecting  on  low 


128    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ground  without  a  lower  outlet  and  which  is  so  un- 
ierlaid  by  clay  or  other  subsoil  that  the  water  cannot 
sink  through.  When  it  is  not  practicable  to  drain 
such  places  by  ditching,  they  often  can  be  per- 
manently dried  up  by  shattering  the  impervious  sub- 
soil in  the  lowest  places  by  dynamite,  thus  affording 
natural  drainage  outlets. 

There  are  about  seventy-seven  million  acres  of 
land  in  this  country  which  are  now  of  no  use  be- 
cause they  are  too  swampy.  This  equals  about  one- 
sixth  the  entire  cultivated  area  of  the  country.  It  is 
estimated  that  by  drainage  the  value  of  this  land  can 
be  increased  about  three  billion  dollars  above  the 
cost  of  drainage.  These  swamp  lands  are  exceed- 
ingly rich  in  humus  and  valuable  plant  foods,  and 
when  drained  and  prepared  for  cultivation  they  will 
produce  larger  crops  than  any  other  existing  soils. 
Farmers  have  been  using  dynamite  for  draining 
swamps  and  wet  fields  for  many  years,  and  much  val- 
uable farm  land  has  already  been  reclaimed  and 
made  available  for  cropping  by  so  doing.  The  cost 
of  the  work,  including  the  price  of  the  explosives 
used,  is  very  small  compared  with  the  value  of  the 
land  reclaimed. 

In  most  parts  of  this  country  the  surface  soil  is  not 
thick  enough  to  supply  vegetation  with  sufficient 
moisture  and  plant  food  to  insure  the  maximum 
growth  and  production.  The  subsoil  is  too  compact 
and  hard  for  plant  roots  to  penetrate,  and  con- 
sequently greatly  hinders  the  successful  growing  of 
crops.  Many  plans  have  been  tried  to  overcome  this 
hardness,  among  them  being  draining,  irrigating  and 
breaking  the  subsoil  with  specially  designed  plows, 
but  none  of  these  methods  have  proved  satisfactory, 
and  it  is  generally  conceded  now  that  the  only  way 


129 


130    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

thoroughly  and  economically  to  increase  the  thick- 
ness of  the  surface  soil  is  to  pulverize  the  subsoil  with 
dynamite. 

"Plant  food  is  dissolved  in  water,"  writes  W.  T. 


1        J       - 

,A         .             ^     j 

■■.  ■ 

1  y~- :  ■ '  ■  ■'.         -         ■  ■  •■  ■ 

. 

''   ''    ''        '"   "     ' 

-    ^            , 

'           .-J 

.1                                                                                                   •         -y 

.'     '        ■      '    ■ 

•\. 

i#2ilH»P&i»*S* 

,-■■■'..                                                                                                  ■..:■.■■,! 

BLASTING  A  DITCH— AFTER  THE  BLAST. 

Spillman,  agriculturist  in  charge  of  Farm  Manage- 
ment Investigations,  Bureau  of  Plant  Industries, 
U.  S.  Department  of  Agriculture.  "  While  a  plant  is 
growing,  a  constant  stream  of  water  flows  up  through 
it  and  evaporates  at  its  leaves.  For  every  pound  of 
increase  in  dry  matter  made  by  the  plant,  from  300 
to  500  pounds  of  water  flow  up  through  it. 

"Plants  in  their  growth  make  use  of  thirteen  ele- 
ments, nine  of  which  they  secure  directly  from  the 
soil.  These  are  called  mineral  plant  foods.  They 
are  phosphorus,  potassium,  calcium,  magnesium, 
sodium,  iron  silica,  chlorin,  and  sulphur.     Soil  con- 


A  Century  of  Success 


131 


sists  mainly  of  small  particles  of  rock.  Nearly  all 
kinds  contain  more  or  less  of  these  mineral  plant 
foods.  Every  year  the  soil  water  dissolves  off  a  thin 
surface  layer  from  each  particle,  and  plants  appro- 


BLASTING   A   DITCH— AFTER   THE    WATER    HAS    BEEN    LET    IN. 

priate  this  water,  thus  securing  their  mineral  plant 
food.  Hydrogen,  another  important  element  of 
plant  food,  is  also  secured  from  water. 

"In  order  to  produce  a  ton  of  hay  on  an  acre  of 
land  it  is  necessary  that  the  growing  grass  pump  up 
from  that  ground  approximately  500  tons  of  water. 
In  order  to  supply  this  enormous  quantity  of  water, 
the  soil  must  not  only  be  in  a  condition  to  absorb  and 
hold  water  well,  but  must  be  porous  enough  to  per- 
mit water  to  flow  freely  through  it. 

"In  addition  to  acting  as  a  water  carrier  for  plant 
life,   soil  must  permit  a  proper  circulation   of   air 


132    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

through  it.  Nearly  half  of  the  volume  of  ordinary 
soils  is  occupied  by  air  spaces.  Soil  which  becomes 
so  compact  as  to  stop  the  air  passages  is  too  wet  for 
most  crops  and  needs  drainage,  for  plant  roots  must 
be  supplied  with  air  and  the  soil  must  be  porous 
enough  to  permit  of  its  free  circulation.  One  of  the 
most  important  objects  of  plowing  is  to  loosen  up  the 
soil  and  mix  fresh  air  with  it." 

It  is  not  necessary,  therefore,  that  the  root  of  a 
plant  shall  come  in  actual  contact  with  all  of  the 
plant  food  elements  of  the  soil  needed  for  the  sus- 
tenance of  the  plant  or  tree.  Plant  roots  have  the 
power  to  draw  from  the  surrounding  soil  the  neces- 
sary elements  of  plant  food,  provided  the  soil  is  of 
such  a  character  as  to  permit  the  passage  of  these 
elements  through  it. 

Water  or  moisture  is  the  carrier  of  these  plant  food 
elements  through  the  soil  and  into  the  plant  roots. 
This  clearly  indicates  the  importance  of  a  porous  soil 
which  will  permit  the  free  passage  of  water  through 
it,  in  order  that  plants  growing  upon  the  surface  may 
be  properly  nurtured  for  rapid  and  healthy  growth. 
It  is  because  the  action  of  an  explosive  on  soil  causes 
it  to  become  thoroughly  loosened  and  aerated  that 
trees  planted  in  blasted  holes  show  so  much  stronger 
and  healthier  growth  than  trees  planted  under  old 
conditions. 

Dynamite  can  also  be  used  to  great  advantage  in 
the  cultivation  of  fruit  trees.  It  is  valuable  when 
planting  trees  because  the  explosion  of  a  whole  or 
half  cartridge  of  dynamite  will  excavate  the  hole  for 
the  tree  instantly,  and  will  loosen  the  soil  for  many 
yards  around,  so  that  the  tree  roots  have  a  much  bet- 
ter opportunity  to  spread  out  than  they  do  when  the 
hole  is  dug  with  a  spade  or  similar  tool.     Occasion- 


APPLE   TREE— TWO  YEARS  AND   FOUR  MONTHS   OLD— PLANTED  WITH  A   SPADE. 

133 


134    THE  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ally  during  the  life  of  the  trees,  small  charges  of 
dynamite  should  be  exploded  midway  between  them 
and  some  three  or  four  feet  below  the  surface  of  the 
ground.  This  tends  to  keep  the  soil  open  so  that  it 
will  hold  moisture  and  the  tree  roots  can  easily 
spread,  and  also  helps  to  keep  the  ground  free  from 
grubs.  When  older  trees  begin  to  fail  it  is  of  much 
benefit  to  detonate  charges  eight  to  ten  feet  away 
from  them. 

Some  time  ago  it  was  the  prevailing  idea  that 
dynamite  was  unnecessary  for  tree  planting  unless  the 
soil  chanced  to  be  underlaid  with  hardpan,  in  which 
case  the  explosive  was  regarded  as  valuable  for  break- 
ing through  the  hard  soil.  It  has  been  found  by  ex- 
periment, however,  that  trees  thrive  better  when 
planted  in  blasted  holes  than  in  hand-dug  holes,  even 
when  no  hardpan  is  encountered. 

The  explanation  of  this  is  simple.  It  is  because 
the  explosion  of  the  dynamite  loosens  up  the  soil  for 
yards  around  the  spot,  kills  all  grubs,  worms  or  other 
animal  life  likely  to  injure  the  young  tree  and  thus 
makes  root  growth  easy;  whereas  digging  the  hole 
with  tools  tends  to  pack  the  earth  around  the  roots 
and  retard  their  growth. 

Few  persons  realize  the  depth  of  tree  root  expan- 
sion. In  one  of  the  "Farmers'  Bulletins,"  issued  by 
the  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture,  is 
shown  a  view  of  a  cross  section  of  orchard  land,  in- 
dicating that  a  tree  has  sent  its  roots  downward  21 
feet  into  the  soil.  This  is  natural  growth.  Under 
normal  conditions  a  healthy  tree  will  seek  its  food  in 
this  way,  but  suppose  a  layer  of  hardpan  is  encoun- 
tered at  a  depth  of  five  or  six  feet?  The  roots  must 
then  spread  out  laterally  for  twenty  feet  or  more. 
The  result  of  this  unnatural  sidewise  growth  is  that 


APPLE  TREE— TWO  YEARS  AND  FOUR  MONTHS  OLD— PLANTED  WITH  DYNAMITE. 

135 


136    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

each  tree  in  the  orchard  is  compelled  to  go  over  into 
the  feeding  supply  of  its  neighbor,  and  consequently 
does  not  receive  the  necessary  amount  of  plant  food 
properly  to  nurture  it  and  allow  of  its  rapid  growth. 
Its  yield  of  fruit  is  also  lessened  by  this  forced  en- 
croaching of  one  tree  on  the  feeding  ground  of  its 
neighbor.  Then,  too,  a  brief  dry  spell  exhausts  all 
the  moisture  from  the  thin  feeding  ground  of  such  a 
tree,  stopping  its  growth  or  killing  it. 

Dynamite  blasting  proves  a  simple  and  effective 
remedy  for  this  condition.  The  blast  breaks  up  the 
hardpan  and  permits  the  roots  to  take  their  natural 
downward  course  into  the  lower  strata  of  soil  in 
which  plenty  of  plant  food  elements  are  available. 
Under  these  conditions,  one  tree  is  not  interfered  with 
by  another;  each  one  receives  the  benefit  of  all  of 
the  soil  allotted  to  it  at  the  time  the  surface  was 
measured  and  laid  out  at  planting  time. 

It  must  not  be  assumed  from  the  above  that  dyna- 
mite blasting  is  beneficial  only  when  the  top  soil  is 
underlaid  with  hardpan.  It  is  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance to  assist  a  tree,  especially  a  young  one,  to  send 
its  roots  out  into  its  feeding  bed  as  easily  and  rapidly 
as  possible.  The  more  porous  and  loose  the  soil,  the 
more  rapid  will  be  the  growth.  Even  in  the  loamy 
soils  of  Oregon,  generally  admitted  to  be  the  most 
perfect  for  fruit  tree  culture  found  in  the  United 
States,  blasting  has  proven  extremely  beneficial  in 
forwarding  the  growth  of  young  fruit  trees. 

Other  uses  to  which  explosives  can  be  put  besides 
those  already  enumerated  in  these  articles  are  the 
digging  of  holes  for  posts  and  poles  by  merely  boring 
a  few  holes  with  an  auger  and  using  a  small  quantity 
of  dynamite,  sinking  wells,  breaking  up  frozen  ore 
piles  and  frozen  material  in  railroad  cars,  opening 


A  Century  of  Success 


i37 


og  jams  and  ice  gorges,  destroying  wrecks  and  raz- 
ng  buildings. 

ioubt  as  time  goes  on  still  other  uses  will  be 
uund  for  that  greatest  of  all  workers,  dynamite.     Its 

IPS 


OLD  ADVERTISEMENT  OF  E.   I.   DU   PONT  DE 
NEMOURS  POWDER  COMPANY. 

very  name  means  power,  and  in  this  age  of  wonder- 
ful machinery  no  machine  has  yet  been  found  that 
does  as  much  work  as  this  powerful  benefactor  of 
mankind. 

The  du  Pont  Company  has  ever  been  the  pioneer 
in  the  field  of  explosives,  both  in  research  and  inven- 


138    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

tion.  It  was  the  first  to  inaugurate  a  national  cam- 
paign of  advertising  and  demonstration  to  develop 
farming  with  dynamite.  The  fact  that  this  is  a  very 
recent  development,  comparatively  speaking,  that  it 
is  in  reality  a  new  phase  of  agriculture,  only  goes  to 
prove  that  now,  just  as  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago, 
the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Company  is 
first  in  its  field. 


X 

THE  REPAUNO  WORKS 

THERE  are  few  industrial  concerns  of  greater 
size  or  more  extensive  organization  than  the  E. 
I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Company.  Many 
of  its  departments  are  larger  than  numerous  entire 
business  enterprises.  But  however  great  this  in- 
dustry has  grown  and  however  greater  it  may  grow 
in  the  future,  practically  all  of  its  activities  are  based 
upon  the  initiative  of  the  du  Ponts  of  earlier  and 
simpler  days. 

Travelers  who  journey  up  or  down  the  Delaware 
River  have  noticed  on  the  New  Jersey  shore  a  few 
miles  above  Chester,  Pa.,  a  manufacturing  plant 
stretching  along  the  banks  for  some  distance.  The 
place  is  teeming  with  activity.  While  a  few  of  the 
buildings  are  of  brick  and  of  considerable  size,  most 
of  them  are  small  wooden  structures  scattered  over  a 
wide  area. 

This  is  the  largest  dynamite  plant  in  the  world. 
There  are  four  hundred  separate  buildings  scattered 
over  1640  acres  of  land. 

The  Ardeer  Works  of  the  Nobels  Explosive  Com- 
pany, Ltd.,  of  Glasgow  covers  a  greater  area  and 
employs  more  workmen,  but  in  the  production  of 
dynamite  its  output  is  only  one-third  that  of  the 
Repauno  Plant,  which  one  year  ago  produced  over 
50,000,000  pounds. 

139 


I4I 


142    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

Great  as  is  this  dynamite  plant,  it  must  ever  be 
associated  with  the  small  undertaking  fathered  by 
Lammot  du  Pont  in  1880.  Not  only  did  this  patriot 
have  foresight  enough  to  realize  the  important  future 
which  dynamite  would  have,  but  many  of  his  me- 
chanical contrivances  are  used  to  this  day.  Upon 
the  sound  beginning  for  which  this  grandson  of  the 
founder  of  the  business  was  responsible  rests  the 
greatest  dynamite  plant  in  the  world.  The  original 
plant  consisted  of  a  single  nitrator  for  the  manufac- 
ture of  nitro-glycerin,  a  separator,  mixing  and  pack- 
ing houses,  magazines,  storage  warehouses  and  a 
power  plant. 

As  the  business  expanded,  other  buildings  were 
erected.  One  group  was  devoted  to  the  making  of 
nitric  and  sulphuric  acids,  which  are  employed  in 
the  production  of  nitro-glycerin.  A  glycerin  refin- 
ery was  added,  two  more  nitrators  were  put  in,  and 
at  length  the  plant  assumed  its  present  proportions. 

The  Repauno  Works  had  been  in  operation  about 
two  years  when  complaint  was  made  by  the  state  au- 
thorities that  the  waste  acids  were  polluting  the 
waters  of  the  Delaware.  Thereupon  Mr.  du  Pont 
set  about  devising  a  process  for  recovering  the  spent 
acids  and  restoring  them  to  their  original  strength. 
He  was  engaged  upon  this  problem  when  he  was 
killed  by  an  explosion  in  1884.  The  task  was  taken 
up  by  others  who  finally  solved  it. 

The  layout  of  the  Repauno  plant  is  such  that  the 
buildings  in  which  nitro-glycerin  and  dynamite  are 
made  are  isolated  from  those  devoted  to  other  pur- 
poses. Hence  when  the  visitor  arrives  he  sees  no 
indications  of  the  dangerous  character  of  the  in- 
dustry. In  the  distance,  to  the  left,  is  located  the 
Eastern  Laboratory,  a  group  of  one-story  structures 


H3 


144 


145 


146    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

devoted  to  experimental  and  testing  work,  which  to- 
gether with  the  Company's  other  experimental 
stations  deserve  an  article  by  themselves. 

To  the  right  stretches  a  group  of  buildings  such 
as  might  be  observed  in  any  large  manufacturing 
plant.  They  include  the  power  station,  the  glycerin 
refining  station  works,  the  storehouses,  the  acid 
works,  the  machine  and  carpenter  shops,  the  admin- 
istration building  and  other  structures  of  a  similar 
character. 

From  appearances  no  one  would  suspect  that  the 
work  carried  on  was  of  an  unusual  character.  Once 
in  a  while  the  visitor  hears  a  sound  like  the  discharge 
of  a  cannon  from  the  direction  of  the  testing  gallery, 
as  if  a  salute  were  being  fired,  but  that  is  all.  The 
men  whistle  at  their  tasks  and  there  is  no  sign  of 
strain  on  their  faces.  There  is  no  outward  evidence 
that  the  place  is  not  as  safe  as  any  other  business  es- 
tablishment. 

And  yet  not  more  than  ten  minutes'  walk  from  this 
spot  is  located  a  nitro-glycerin  plant  where  the  most 
powerful  of  modern  explosives  is  produced  in  large 
quantities.  The  nitrating  house,  however,  is  shut  in 
by  high  earthen  barriers  as  shown  in  the  accompany- 
ing illustrations,  so  that  in  case  the  charge  in  the  tank 
suddenly  "lets  go"  the  other  buildings. in  the  vicinity 
will  not  be  destroyed. 

Much  of  the  work  outside  the  Danger  Zone  is  in- 
teresting, especially  the  acid-mixing  works  and  the 
glycerin-refining  works.  The  Repauno  plant  makes 
every  detail  of  its  product,  and  the  making  of  the 
proper  acids  and  the  refining  of  glycerin  are  of  the 
highest  importance.  Near  the  glycerin  refinery  is  a 
field  of  many  thousands  of  steel  drums  containing 


'47 


148    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

crude  glycerin  as  it  comes  to  the  plant.  Glycerin 
in  this  state  is  almost  black.  It  is  about  as  heavy  as 
warm  cylinder  oil  and  is  a  by-product  of  the  soap 
industry,  being  a  constituent  of  both  animal  and 
vegetable  fats. 

Before  entering  the  Danger  Zone  the  visitor 
must  exchange  his  shoes  for  rubber-soled  tennis 
slippers  to  prevent  any  possible  friction  from  the 
steel  nails.  A  spark  near  nitro-glycerin  is  the  one 
thing  least  relished  in  a  dynamite  plant. 

The  nitrating  tank  in  which  the  mixed  sulphuric 
and  nitric  acids  and  glycerin  are  brought  together 
to  make  nitro-glycerin  is  located  in  a  small  wooden 
building.  A  flight  of  steps  leads  to  the  single  room 
where  the  work  is  carried  on.  The  place  is  as  clean 
as  a  new  pin.  Rubber  mats  cover  the  floor,  and  every 
piece  of  exposed  metal  is  as  bright  as  elbow  grease 
can  make  it.  On  one  wall  hangs  a  blackboard  on 
which  is  kept  a  record  of  each  charge  made.  Two 
men,  the  foreman  and  his  assistant,  are  the  only  per- 
sons regularly  allowed  in  the  building. 

The  mixture  is  worked  in  batches  of  about  2500 
pounds.  The  foreman  stands  watching  a  thermome- 
ter which  records  the  temperature  of  the  bubbling, 
seething  mass  in  the  covered  nitrating  tank.  When 
the  glycerin,  which  flows  into  the  tank  in  a  small 
stream,  comes  in  contact  with  the  acids,  heat  is  de- 
veloped. If  the  temperature  of  the  mixture  rises 
above  a  certain  degree,  red  fumes  are  given  off,  and 
unless  it  is  quickly  reduced  by  artificial  means  an  ex- 
plosion takes  place. 

In  order  to  keep  down  the  temperature,  a  shaft  to 
which  paddles  are  attached  is  kept  revolving  in  the 
tank  thoroughly  to  agitate  the  mixture.  In  England 
and  on  the  continent  compressed  air  is  forced  into 


A  Century  of  Success 


149 


the  mass  from  the  bottom  for  the  same  purpose.  In 
addition  a  refrigerating  mixture  is  constantly  being 
pumped   through   coils   of   lead   pipe   that  line   the 


SEPARATING  HOUSE. 


inside  of  the  tank.  Should  the  agitator  for  any  rea- 
son fail  to  work,  or  the  flow  of  brine  through  the 
pipes  cease,  even  for  a  few  minutes,  the  nitro-glycerin 
would  explode,  killing  the  workmen  and  wrecking 
the  plant. 

One  day  the  engineer  in  charge  of  the  California 
Powder  Works  carelessly  allowed  the  fire  under  the 
boiler  to  get  so  low  that  the  steam  pressure  was  not 
sufficient  to  keep  the  agitator  going  and  it  stopped 
before  the  nitrating  process  was  completed.  Im- 
mediately the  mixture  began  to  smoke,  that  is,  give 
off  red  acid  fumes.    The  workmen,  knowing  that  the 


150    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

mass  would  soon  explode  and  being  unable  on  the 
moment  to  think  of  any  way  to  prevent  it,  ran  from 
the  building. 

On  their  way  to  safety  they  met  William  Willson, 
the  superintendent,  to  whom  they  explained  the  situa- 
tion. Without  a  moment's  hesitation  Mr.  Willson, 
ignoring  the  peril  he  was  incurring,  hurried  to  the 
building  they  had  just  left.  By  this  time  the  room 
in  which  the  nitrator  was  located  was  so  filled  with 
the  acid  smoke  that  he  could  scarcely  breathe,  but  he 
did  not  flinch.  His  one  idea  was  to  prevent  an  ex- 
plosion at  any  cost  to  himself.  He  remembered  that 
the  hand  wheel  that  used  to  turn  the  agitator  before 
steam  power  was  introduced  was  still  in  place.  His 
only  chance  was  to  reach  it  and  turn  it  with  every 
ounce  of  physical  force  he  could  muster.  Perhaps 
he  was  already  too  late  and  the  nitro-glycerin  death 
would  get  him. 

Nevertheless  he  stumbled  through  the  blinding, 
suffocating  smoke  until  he  felt  the  handle  in  his  hand. 
Then  he  turned  the  wheel  with  frenzied  speed.  He 
realized  that  unless  he  could  lower  the  temperature 
of  the  contents  of  the  tank  within  the  next  few  min- 
utes his  career  as  a  dynamite-maker  would  end  there 
and  then.  And  so  for  nearly  an  hour  his  arm  worked 
back  and  forth  like  the  piston  rod  of  an  engine  until 
the  acid  fumes  gradually  disappeared,  the  tempera- 
ture was  reduced  and  the  process  of  nitration  was 
completed.  Then  utterly  exhausted  by  his  efforts 
Willson  sank  to  the  floor. 

Fortunately  such  incidents  are  of  rare  occurrence. 
But  the  composure  and  nerve  of  the  foreman  as  he 
stands  by  the  tank  are  admirable.  Outwardly  he  is 
as  calm  as  a  man  boiling  harmless  fats,  and  yet  he 
knows  that  if  the  fumes  once  appear  he  may  meet 


A  Century  of  Success 


151 


the  death  of  several  other  men  who  have  been  blown 
to  pieces  on  the  same  spot. 

When  nitro-glycerin  was  first  manufactured  in  this 
country  at  the  old  Giant  Powder  Works  in  San  Fran- 
cisco, it  required  one  hour  and  thirty  minutes  to  com- 


<■'■■'                         ""     ,                            ''.'■' 

\                                 '•     -    ■.-,-'  -::  :■--  . ,    ■ 

•  V  .                                 '".'■■ 

\              -                                                                                 1 

: . ; : : . 1 

POWER  HOUSE  AND  ACID  PLANT,  LOUVIERS,  COLORADO. 

plete  the  process  of  nitration.  To-day,  because  of 
the  many  improvements  introduced  during  the  last 
decade,  forty-two  minutes  are  sufficient.  With  three 
nitrators  at  work  the  Repauno  plant  has  produced  as 
high  as  80,000  pounds  of  nitro-glycerin  in  a  single 
day.  This  means  that  each  nitrator  turned  out  from 
ten  to  twelve  charges  of  from  2500  to  2800  pounds. 

A  long,  narrow,  elevated  bridge,  along  one  side  of 
which  runs  a  covered  lead  trough,  connects  the  nitrat- 
ing house  with  the  separator,  or  nitro-glycerin  build- 
ing, an  eighth  of  a  mile  distant.     When  the  process 


152    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

of  nitration  is  completed,  the  nitro-glycerin,  which  is 
lighter  than  the  mixed  acids,  is  drawn  off  into  a 
trough  through  which  it  runs  to  the  separator.  Here 
alkalis  and  water  are  mixed  with  it  to  remove  any 
traces  of  acid  which  may  yet  remain.  Then  the  pure 
nitro-glycerin  is  placed  in  lead  storage  tanks  ready 
for  use. 

This  separator  building  is  considered  the  most 
dangerous  on  the  grounds,  because  here  the  liquid 
stands  and  acid  nitro-glycerin  rises  to  the  surface. 
While  in  this  state  the  liquid  is  subject  to  sponta- 
neous explosion,  and  explosions  in  this  building  are 
more  disastrous  than  those  occurring  in  the  nitrating 
building  because  it  frequently  contains  10,000  pounds 
of  nitro-glycerin  whereas  in  the  nitrating  tank  there 
is  never  more  than  2800  pounds  of  the  substance. 

Michael  Connolly,  who  has  worked  at  Repauno 
for  twenty-five  years,  and  is  now  a  foreman,  is  one  of 
the  few  men  who  has  had  the  nerve  and  good  fortune 
to  face  an  explosion  in  the  separator  building  and 
escape  with  his  life.  A  number  of  years  ago  while 
at  work  drawing  a  charge,  the  mass  suddenly  began 
to  smoke.  Connolly  did  not  run  but  had  the  good 
sense  to  turn  on  the  compressed  air  and  let  it  flow 
through  the  smoking  mixture  in  the  tank.  Inside  of 
ten  minutes  the  danger  point  was  passed,  but  when 
Connolly  was  later  asked  how  he  felt  he  replied 
laconically,  "As  weak  as  a  rag." 

As  one  stands  looking  into  the  separating  tank  a 
man  enters  the  room  from  the  opposite  side  pushing 
a  queer  rubber-tired  cart.  Mounted  on  springs  be- 
tween the  wheels  is  a  square  enclosed  box  in  which 
nitro-glycerin  is  carried  to  a  dynamite-mixing  house 
several  hundred  feet  away.  The  smooth,  elevated 
board  walk  connecting  these  two  buildings  is  the 


153 


154    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

pathway  which  this  man  travels  many  times  daily. 
His  cart  holds  about  250  pounds  of  liquid  lightning. 
He  walks  with  a  slow  shuffling  gait,  keeps  his  eyes 
fixed  on  the  cart  every  moment  and  does  not  risk  his 
life  by  stubbing  his  toe. 

In  both  the  nitrating  and  separating  houses  any 
drop  of  nitro-glycerin  that  falls  to  the  floor  is  at  once 
washed  away  with  alcohol  and  water  and  soda. 
Plain  water  is  useless  for  this  purpose  because  it  does 
not  dissolve  the  explosive.  Every  drop  of  the  liquid 
must  be  removed,  for  even  the  most  minute  particles 
can  be  exploded.  A  small  spark  is  as  dangerous  as  a 
big  one  among  10,000  pounds  of  nitro-glycerin. 

The  visitor  arrives  at  the  dynamite-mixing  house 
at  about  the  same  time  as  the  man  with  his  cart  whose 
dangerous  load  is  carefully  drained,  through  rubber 
hose  which  was  a  part  of  the  cart  equipment,  into  a 
pug  mill  where  it  is  mixed  with  other  ingredients  al- 
ready prepared.  A  pug  mill  consists  of  a  large 
wooden  tub  about  ten  feet  in  diameter  in  which  are 
set  two  large,  hard-rubber-faced  wheels  about  eight 
feet  in  diameter  and  a  foot  thick.  These  wheels,  in 
a  double  rolling,  circling  movement  on  the  inside  of 
the  tub,  thoroughly  mix  the  nitro-glycerin  and  the 
dynamite  dope,  consisting  as  before  stated  principally 
of  wood  pulp. 

A  few  other  ingredients  are  included  to  produce  a 
balanced  formula  which  gives  a  minimum  explosive 
effect  without  the  production  of  objectionable  gases 
or  smoke.  In  appearance  this  mixed  dynamite  looks 
much  like  brown  sugar  as  it  is  removed  by  wooden 
shovels  from  the  pug  mill  to  wooden  boxes  which 
are  loaded  on  the  common  low  flat  cars  and  wheeled 
to  the  loading  houses. 

The  dynamite-loading  houses  are  very  interesting. 


DRUCKMESSER   (PRESSER  GAUGE),  REPAUNO  WORKS. 
155 


156    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

The  machinery  is  operated  by  two  attendants  and  run 
by  pneumatic  power.  The  center  of  the  loading  ma- 
chine is  made  of  a  square  revolving  container,  each 
side  of  which  carries  about  two  dozen  shells.  When 
the  dynamite  is  shoveled  into  one  end  of  this  ma- 
chine the  operator  at  the  other  end  turns  a  small  lever 
which  looks  like  an  air-brake  handle  on  a  street  car. 

At  each  turn  of  this  power  lever  the  machine  makes 
a  quarter  revolution  and  the  dynamite  falls  into  the 
open  ends  of  the  cartridges,  where  it  is  pressed  firmly 
into  place  by  a  series  of  wooden  plungers.  Another 
turn  of  the  machine  brings  a  new  set  of  shells  into 
position  and  at  the  same  time  dumps  the  loaded  cart- 
ridges into  a  trough  from  which  the  operator  trans- 
fers them  to  larger  boxes,  in  which  they  are  trans- 
ported to  isolated  packing  houses  to  be  prepared  for 
shipment.  Of  the  seven  machines  constantly  in  use 
at  Repauno  one  has  loaded  32,000,000  pounds  of  the 
explosive  without  an  accident. 

Under  the  rules  of  the  Interstate  Commerce  Com- 
mission manufacturers  and  railroad  employes  must 
exercise  great  care  in  loading  cars  with  explosives. 
The  boxes  must  lie  flat  on  the  floor;  machinery  or 
other  articles  made  of  metal  must  not  be  piled  on 
top  of  them;  and  detonating  caps,  fuses,  or  fireworks 
cannot  be  carried  in  the  same  car  with  them.  While 
dynamite  must  be  handled  with  care  and  respect,  un- 
der ordinary  circumstances  it  can  be  hauled  from  one 
end  of  the  country  to  the  other  with  as  little  danger 
as  sand.  It  is  said  that  stray  bullets  fired  by  hunters 
have  been  responsible  for  more  explosions  of  dyna- 
mite in  railroad  trains  than  anything  else. 

There  are  several  instances  on  record  in  which  cars 
loaded  with  several  thousand  pounds  of  dynamite 
have  been  smashed  to  pieces  in  a  railroad  wreck  with- 
out causing  an  explosion. 


157 


158    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

A  few  years  ago  a  car  containing  over  thirty  thou- 
sand pounds  of  dynamite  was  left  on  a  siding  at  the 
top  of  a  steep  grade.  The  next  morning  the  car  in 
some  inexplicable  manner  got  away  from  the  train 
and  started  down  the  incline.  By  the  time  it  reached 
the  bottom  it  was  going  at  a  speed  of  18  miles  an 
hour.  On  the  track  just  ahead  of  it  stood  a  car 
loaded  with  35,000  pounds  of  dynamite.  The  runa- 
way crashed  into  it,  splintering  its  walls  and  scatter- 
ing the  boxes,  some  of  which  burst  open,  along  the 
track,  but  there  was  no  explosion. 

In  an  accident  at  Potsdam,  N.  Y.,  October  3, 
1897,  two  hundred  cases  of  dynamite  were  smashed 
and  the  contents  of  56  were  thrown  about  over  the 
ground  and  yet,  strange  to  relate,  nothing  happened. 

There  are  three  separate  units,  each  complete  in 
itself,  in  the  Repauno  plant.  They  are  similarly 
equipped  and  have  a  like  capacity.  If  any  of  the 
three  is  put  out  of  commission  by  an  accident  the 
others  can  continue  operation  independently  and 
without  interruption.  New  units  can  be  added  as 
the  demand  for  dynamite  increases. 

In  order  to  turn  out  still  larger  quantities  of  dyna- 
mite and  other  high  explosives  the  works  must  be  able 
to  produce  greater  quantities  of  nitric  and  sulphuric 
acids.  Fortunately  the  company's  present  acid 
plant  has  a  capacity  far  in  excess  of  its  needs.  The 
supply  of  iron  pyrites,  which  is  obtained  from  Can- 
ada, appears  inexhaustible.  The  straight  acid  tanks 
have  a  storage  capacity  of  10,000,000  pounds  and  the 
mixed  tanks  of  1,500,000  pounds.  The  glycerin  re- 
finery, which  takes  the  product  imported  from 
France,  Holland  and  England,  can  double  its  output 
by  working  another  shift  of  men  at  night.  The 
great  nitrate  of  soda  storehouses  can  hold  70,000,000 


A  Century  of  Success 


i59 


pounds  of  this  indispensable  chemical  at  one  time. 
With  unlimited  capital  and  a  staff  of  expert  chem- 
ists and  workmen  that  has  no  superior,  the  du  Pont 
Company  is  in  a  position  to  maintain  indefinitely  its 
prestige  in  the  high-explosive  field. 


NORTHERN  PACIFIC  TUNNEL,  KELSO,  WASH. 

The  visitor  is  struck  by  the  lack  of  fire  apparatus. 
Formerly  there  were  hose  and  fire  buckets,  but  sev- 
eral men  were  killed  in  their  efforts  to  save  plants 
that  had  caught  fire.  As  a  result,  the  company  re- 
moved the  apparatus  and  instructed  its  men  that 
whenever  buildings  catch  fire  or  an  explosion 
threatens,  to  make  their  escape  at  once.  Thus  the 
company  considers  human  life  as  of  more  value  than 
property.  Its  consideration  for  the  employes  has 
been  notable  throughout  its  entire  history.  Men  re- 
main with  the  company  year  after  year  in  spite  of 


160    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  occasional  fatal  accidents  that  occur.  There  is 
no  more  interesting  chapter  in  the  story  of  the  du 
Ponts  than  that  which  deals  with  their  treatment  of 
working-men. 


XI 

CHEMICAL  AND   EXPERIMENTAL  WORK 

TO  the  success  of  any  great  enterprise  many  causes 
contribute.  Life  and  industry  are  both  com- 
plex. It  is  only  the  amateur  who  glibly  says  this  or 
that  is  the  only  true  cause.  The  man  of  experience 
and  knowledge  knows  better.  The  reader  who  has 
followed  this  narrative  need  not  be  told  that  many 
elements  have  combined  to  make  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de 
Nemours  Powder  Company  one  of  the  country's  most 
successful  and  useful  enterprises.  Surely  it  is  not 
for  the  writer  to  dogmatize  on  just  what  was  the 
leading  factor  which  brought  about  this  result. 

Bearing  in  mind  then  the  complexity  and  diversity 
of  such  a  large  industry,  it  is  yet  possible  definitely  to 
attribute  a  large  measure  of  the  prosperity  of  the  du 
Pont  explosive  business  to  a  spirit  of  constant  dissat- 
isfaction with  the  merely  satisfactory.  The  com- 
pany has  always  sought  to  progress  and  improve  upon 
its  product.  It  has  never  remained  content  with  old 
methods  and  old  formulas  provided  there  was  any 
hope  of  finding  better.  Of  course  it  has  not  been 
alone  in  this  policy.  There  are  many  other  great 
industries  where  talent  never  rests.  But  the  du  Pont 
business  is  remarkable  in  that  such  a  consistent  pro- 
gram of  advancement  should  go  hand  in  hand  with 
great  age. 

The  majority  of  large  industrial  concerns  in  this 
country  date  from  the  decade  which  ended  in  1901 
161 


1 62    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  1902.  Before  that  period  they  either  did  not  ex- 
ist at  all,  or  their  then  component  parts  were  so  scat- 
tered and  small  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  say  that 
the  vast  corporations  and  holding  companies  of  to- 
day have  any  relation  to  the  insignificant  plants  of 
the  nineties.  Most  American  "aggregations  of  cap- 
ital" are  "brand  new." 

Not  so  with  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder 
Company.  Its  corporate  form  is  not  the  same  to- 
day as  it  was  twenty  years  ago.  It  may  include  more 
powder  mills  to-day  than  it  did  at  an  earlier  period. 
But  in  essence  it  is  the  same  as  the  far  earlier  enter- 
prise. The  business  was  founded  in  1802.  It  bears 
the  same  name  to-day  that  it  did  in  1802.  The  same 
family  still  control  its  destinies.  In  other  words,  the 
du  Pont  business  is  really  exactly  one  hundred  years 
older  than  the  great  bulk  of  modern  industrial  cor- 
porations. 

Mere  age  is  not  necessarily  a  thing  to  boast  of. 
We  are  not  responsible  for  our  years  any  more  than 
we  are  for  our  height,  or  the  shape  of  our  heads. 
But  age  with  honor,  age  with  clear  vision,  and  age 
with  the  spirit  and  vigor  of  youth  is  a  thing  to  boast 
of.  True  enough,  a  corporation  is  a  creature  that 
knows  no  death.  Or  at  least  it  is  self-renewing.  But 
the  sober  truth  is  that  age  in  business  often  brings 
moldy  methods,  worn-out  formulas,  disastrous  self- 
contentment.  Therefore  it  is  remarkable,  it  is 
praiseworthy,  to  find  an  old  business  enterprise  easily 
in  the  van  of  industrial  progress. 

In  a  sense,  explosive  making  is  strictly  a  chemical 
business,  and  if  it  is  to  move  forward,  it  is  an  experi- 
mental business.  Gunpowder  has  been  made  for 
centuries.  It  could  still  be  made  in  the  old  way,  and 
powder  might  be  manufactured  in  great  quantities 


i 


163 


164    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

without  any  elaborate  scientific  research.  But  to  de- 
vise a  product  which  is  safe  to  manufacture,  which  is 
safe  to  handle,  which  is  of  high  quality,  which  is  low 
in  price,  and  finally  which  is  exactly  and  best  suited 
to  the  use  to  which  it  is  put — there  is  a  task  which  the 
scientists  and  the  chemists  may  never  be  done  work- 
ing upon.  And  to  judge  from  the  surprising  extent 
and  amount  of  scientific  and  chemical  work  which  the 
du  Pont  Company  is  always  engaged  upon,  and  the 
ability,  eagerness  and  ambition  of  the  men  who  carry 
on  this  line,  it  is  evident  that  the  limits  of  usefulness 
and  importance  of  this  branch  of  the  industry  are  al- 
most limitless. 

To  just  what  extent  has  the  chemical  and  experi- 
mental work  contributed  to  the  success  of  the  du 
Pont  business?  It  is  never  possible  to  answer  such  a 
direct  question,  but  an  idea  of  the  weight  which  the 
directors  of  the  company  attach  to  these  activities 
may  be  obtained  from  the  annual  report  for  the  year 
191 1,  which  says: 

"Our  Experimental  Laboratories  and  our  Tech- 
nical Division,  which  are  engaged  in  discovering  new 
uses  for  explosives  and  in  recommending  more  eco- 
nomical methods  to  our  customers,  have  continued 
their  efforts  in  a  satisfactory  manner  throughout  the 
year  and  we  believe  that  no  small  part  of  our  success 
is  due  to  the  operations  of  these  two  divisions  of  the 
industry." 

If  the  work  of  any  one  department  of  a  business  is 
well  done  it  is  never  possible  to  estimate  to  the  full 
the  beneficial  effects  upon  the  business  as  a  whole. 
So  it  cannot  be  told  to  the  last  dollar  how  much  the 
chemists  and  scientists  have  saved  the  du  Pont  Com- 
pany. 

As  compared  with  Germany,  this  country  has  been 


1 66    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

slow  in  taking  up  technical  chemical  research  work 
in  connection  with  its  great  industries.  For  a  long 
time  manufacturers  in  this  country  did  not  appreciate 
the  direct  pecuniary  advantages  of  extensive  investi- 
gation into  so-called  theoretical  questions.  But  re- 
cently this  situation  has  been  changing  simply  be- 
cause it  has  been  discovered  that  research  work  has 
been  highly  profitable,  and  as  a  result,  large  labora- 
tories have  been  established  in  connection  with  great 
industries.  In  this  field  as  in  others  the  du  Pont 
Company  has  been  much  of  a  pioneer.  It  is  doubt- 
ful if  even  to-day  there  are  any  larger  or  busier  chem- 
ical laboratories  connected  with  manufacturing  com- 
panies than  the  two  which  the  powder  makers  main- 
tain. 

The  chemical  work  is  directed  from  the  head  office 
of  the  company  at  Wilmington  and  is  under  the 
charge  of  a  Chemical  Director,  who  occupies  a  posi- 
tion with  the  company  of  unusual  importance  for  an 
American  industry,  although  in  scientific  Germany 
such  a  position  is  not  unique.  Besides  the  general 
directing  force  in  Wilmington  there  are  two  experi- 
mental laboratories  and  a  staff  of  field  chemists  who 
maintain  a  chemical  control,  as  it  were,  at  the  various 
plants.  They  closely  follow  the  operations  and  are 
at  hand  if  anything  goes  wrong.  A  force  of  chemists 
may  stay  at  one  plant  from  one  to  six  months  to  fol- 
low the  operations  there. 

As  for  the  two  laboratories,  or  experiment  stations, 
it  may  be  said  in  a  general  way  that  the  work  which 
they  carry  on  is  the  advance  guard  of  the  entire  ex- 
plosive business.  At  these  laboratories  are  tirelessly 
pursued  such  objects  as  the  invention  of  new  ex- 
plosives, entirely  different  from  any  yet  discovered, 
the  improvement  of  safety  in  manufacture  and  use, 


1 68    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  improvement  of  processes  and  quality,  the  exami- 
nation into  complaints  of  products  in  the  market,  the 
study  of  behavior  of  products  in  the  market  as  well 
as  of  those  which  have  not  yet  been  put  upon  the  mar- 
ket, the  recording  of  all  manner  of  tests,  the  keeping 
of  exhaustive  records  of  yields  and  the  cutting  down 
of  costs,  and  the  development  of  new  permissible  ex- 
plosives for  use  in  coal  mines.  At  both  laboratories 
miniature  plants  are  maintained  for  the  manufacture 
of  both  old  and  new  explosives.  For  one  and  a  half 
to  two  years  new  explosives  have  been  made 
only  at  the  experimental  laboratories.  Not  until 
the  chemical  department  had  followed  this  long 
period  of  study  of  the  new  products  were  they  turned 
over  to  the  operating  department.  At  times  the 
miniature  plants  of  the  chemists  have  made  as  much 
as  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  pounds  of  a  new  explosive 
and  this  product  has  been  sold  to  the  trade. 

It  is  impossible  to  describe  in  this  general  way  all 
the  activities  of  the  chemical  laboratories,  and  a 
clearer  idea  of  the  many  ways  in  which  old  explosives 
are  studied  and  new  explosives  invented  may  be 
gathered  from  a  more  detailed  description  of  each  of 
the  two  stations.  To  speak  of  a  "detailed  descrip- 
tion" usually  implies  dullness  to  the  average  reader, 
and  while  the  writer  may  fall  short  of  conveying  any 
adequate  idea  of  the  almost  breathless  interest  which 
any  visitor  will  feel  while  watching  the  delicate  tests 
and  experiments  which  are  carried  on  in  these  places, 
he  can  at  least  do  greater  justice  to  this  important 
work  by  describing  the  two  stations  separately. 

On  the  outskirts  of  the  city  of  Wilmington,  along 
the  shores  of  the  Brandywine,  lie  the  scattered  build- 
ings of  the  Experimental  Station,  where  is  carried  on 
all  the  chemical  and  experimental  work  in  connection 


169 


170    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

with  smokeless  and  black  powder,  where  new  prob- 
lems brought  to  the  company's  attention  by  outsiders 
are  considered,  where  the  ballistic  work  is  conducted 
and  where  the  highly  important  experiments  and 
tests  made  in  conjunction  and  cooperation  with  the 
United  States  Government  are  cared  for.  The  Ex- 
perimental Station  is  the  technical  and  scientific  aid 
of  all  departments  of  the  company,  except  the  high 
explosive  department,  which  is  so  important  as  to  re- 
quire an  experiment  station  all  its  own,  and  besides 
developing  new  explosives  and  uses  for  them  solves 
the  difficulties  met  in  the  manufacture,  storage  and 
use  of  old  powders. 

Adjoining  the  Repauno  dynamite  works  on  the 
Delaware  River  is  the  Eastern  Laboratory,  which  is 
devoted  solely  to  the  study  of  high  explosives,  which 
term,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  means  dynamite. 
The  future  may  bring  forth  other  high  explosives, 
but  to-day  dynamite  is  the  great  commercial  high  ex- 
plosive and  at  the  Eastern  Laboratory  it  reigns 
supreme.  At  each  of  the  laboratories,  or  stations, 
there  are  employed  no  less  than  thirty  trained  chem- 
ists, roughly  speaking,  and  including  laborers  who 
assist  the  chemists,  each  station  has  in  its  employ 
about  one  hundred  men. 

The  Experimental  Station  consists  of  a  large  group 
of  buildings  along  the  banks  of  the  Brandywine  where 
formerly  stood  many  of  the  old  black  powder  mills. 
These  mills  in  fact  still  stand  there,  but  have  been 
turned  over  to  the  chemical  department  to  be  used 
by  it.  Some  of  them  were  built  in  1829.  The  Ex- 
perimental Station  was  begun  in  a  small  way  about 
1903,  and  has  developed  rapidly  to  its  present  propor- 
tions. Here  are  carried  on  investigations  into  every- 
thing which  the  chemists  could  investigate,  except 


A  Century  of  Success  171 

high  explosives.  It  is  the  central  scientific  station 
for  the  company,  and  is  one  of  the  most  complete 
experiment  stations  in  the  United  States. 

The  Station  is  practically  an  independent  plant. 
It  has  a  large,  handsome  central  building  where  are 
located  offices  and  laboratories.  Then  there  are  a  ma- 
chine shop,  carpenter  and  plumbers'  shops,  electric 
light  and  power  plants  and  boiler  house.  On  one 
side  is  the  Brandywine,  across  which  is  a  city  park. 
In  all  other  directions  is  land  owned  by  various  du 
Pont  interests,  as  there  is  room  for  expansion.  The 
spot  is  secluded.  The  mechanical  part  of  the  sta- 
tion, carpenter  shop  and  so  on,  are  near  the  entrance, 
as  of  course  they  have  no  elements  of  danger.  On 
the  slope  of  the  hill  rising  from  the  river  and  back 
of  the  shops  are  the  firing  and  shooting  ranges.  Scat- 
tered in  the  woods  along  the  river  and  beyond  the 
main  building,  which  occupies  a  central  location,  are 
the  powder  magazines  and  the  old  black  powder 
mills.  The  buildings  are  small,  fire-proof  and  iso- 
lated, the  more  dangerous  ones  being  far  back  in  the 
woods.  Thus  it  is  seen  that  even  in  the  laying  out 
of  an  experiment  station  the  company  uses  every  pos- 
sible foresight  not  only  to  produce  the  most  efficient 
results  but  to  prevent  accident  and  loss  of  life. 

For  many  years  the  formula  for  black  powder  re- 
mained unchanged,  but  work  had  been  done  at  the 
Experimental  Station  on  its  improvement,  and  after 
certain  results  had  been  secured  the  new  formula  was 
used  first  for  one-  and  two-pound  samples,  than  for 
one-  and  three-hundred-pound  samples,  and  finally 
an  entire  mill  was  turned  over  to  its  manufacture  and 
one  hundred  and  fifty  lots  of  three  thousand  pounds 
each  were  made.  Thus  it  is  apparent  that  the  chem- 
ical department  does  not  drop  a  new  thing  as  soon 


172    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

as  it  is  discovered.  The  new  process  or  compound, 
or  whatever  it  may  be,  is  carried  on  until  there  re- 
mains little  doubt  as  to  its  value. 

A  very  complete  system  is  in  force  for  keeping  in 
touch  with  the  various  departments — both  for  giving 
and  receiving  information.  Each  member  of  the 
professional  staff  at  the  Station  writes  a  weekly  re- 
port which  goes  to  the  Director.  These  reports  are 
summarized  weekly,  then  monthly  reports  are  made 
and  summarized  at  the  end  of  each  month,  and  finally 
each  year  has  a  report  to  itself.  In  this  way  there 
is  at  all  times  available  a  complete  resume  of  the 
work  being  carried  on.  The  work  is  carefully  di- 
vided and  sub-divided.  There  are  three  professional 
departments  at  the  Station,  a  chemical  department, 
a  mechanical  department,  which  experiments  with 
machinery,  and  a  ballistic  department,  which  studies 
the  behavior  of  powder  as  used  with  all  manner  of 
arms  and  ammunition.  Including  the  mechanical 
and  ballistic  forces  there  are  about  thirty-five  uni- 
versity-trained men.  In  the  largest  of  the  three  de- 
partments, the  chemical,  there  is  considerable  sub- 
division. Not  to  mention  all  the  branches  of  work 
upon  which  the  chemists  are  engaged,  it  may  be  said 
that  attention  is  constantly  being  paid  to  black  pow- 
der, smokeless  powder,  general  chemical  work  such 
as  the  study  of  raw  materials,  organic  research  work, 
the  study  of  artificial  leather,  etc. 

Important  progress  is  constantly  being  made  to- 
ward the  improvement  of  artificial  leather.  This 
is  not  merely  a  by-product  of  the  explosive  industry. 
The  raw  material  is  especially  selected  and  made  for 
the  purpose  of  producing  fabrikoid  and  other  similar 
products.  The  fact  that  the  basis  of  these  products 
is  also  one  of  the  materials  which  is  used  in  making 


A  Century  of  Success 


i73 


certain  explosives  does  not  indicate  that  the  company 
regards  its  pyroxylin  mixtures  as  of  subsidiary  im- 
portance. 

Too  much  stress  cannot  be  laid  on  the  fact  that  the 
company  is  steadily  seeking  to  improve  the  quality  of 
its  products.     But  this  does  not  mean  that  the  Ex- 


interior  SMALL  ARMS  RANGE. 


perimental  Station  is  not  run  on  a  business  basis. 
There  is  a  complete  willingness  to  spend  great  sums 
of  money  on  what  may  seem  to  be  purely  scientific 
work.  Many  months  were  spent  in  determining  the 
exact  freezing  point  of  nitro-glycerin.  But  while 
there  is  no  stint  in  expenditure  the  directing  force 
knows  at  all  times  just  what  every  test  and  experi- 


174    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ment  is  costing.     A  complete  set  of  accounts  is  kept, 
and  each  expense  is  considered  carefully. 

Space  does  not  permit  a  detailed  description  of 
every  test  which  is  made  at  the  Station.  But  even  the 
visitor  who  spends  a  chance  hour  there  cannot  but 
be  fascinated  by  the  expert  and  delicate  work  which 
is  in  progress.  There  are  several  magazines  where 
samples  of  powder  are  stored  from  a  few  days  to  a 
year  and  are  under  almost  hourly  examination  for 
changes  or  deterioration  in  their  quality.  At  times 
there  are  from  500  to  1000  samples  being  thus  tested. 
The  temperature  in  such  magazines  is  always  high, 
being  the  maximum  allowed  on  a  warship.  The  tests 
of  the  British,  French  and  German  Governments  are 
applied  as  well  as  those  preferred  by  the  American 
War  and  Navy  Department.  Many  samples  of  pow- 
der are  purposely  made  bad  to  see  how  they  will  act 
under  these  various  trying  conditions. 

There  is  another  magazine  where  powder  is  sub- 
jected to  such  a  high  temperature  as  to  force  its  ex- 
plosion sooner  or  later.  But  the  samples  do  not  need 
to  be  watched,  for  their  detonation  blows  out  a  piece 
of  sheet  iron  which  by  connection  with  clockwork  in 
another  building  shows  exactly  when  the  explosion 
occurs.  One  of  the  most  interesting  sights  is  the  un- 
derground shooting  gallery,  where  experiments  are 
made  with  small  artillery. 

Those  who  have  followed  at  all  closely  the  history 
of  the  powder  business  are  familiar  with  the  great 
saving  effected  on  old  powder  by  the  United  States 
Government  purely  through  the  good  will  of  the  du 
Pont  Company.  Formerly  powder  subjected  to  se- 
vere conditions  or  which  had  become  obsolete  be- 
cause of  changes  in  guns  was  a  dead  loss  to  the  Gov- 
ernment and  was  dumped  at  sea.     But  the  Company 


A  Century  of  Success  175 

discovered  a  method  of  reworking  this  powder  which 
it  turned  over  to  the  Government  without  compensa- 
tion. Part  of  the  process  of  reworking  old  powder  is 
carried  on  at  the  station. 

Officials  of  the  Army  and  Navy  are  constant  vis- 
itors at  the  station,  and  the  company  works  in  har- 
mony with  both  ,the  Army  and  Navy  for  the  improve- 
ment of  the  powder  used  by  the  two  branches  of  the 
service. 

Although  the  Eastern  Laboratory  deals  only  with 
dynamite  and  related  subjects,  this  is  no  small  af- 
fair, for  there  are  at  least  fifteen  distinct  and  different 
kinds  of  dynamite  made  by  the  company,  and  of  each 
kind  there  are  many  grades,  sometimes  as  many  as 
ten,  representing  different  strengths.  The  entire  staff 
of  the  Laboratory  is  engaged  in  the  study  of  these 
different  kinds  and  grades  of  dynamite.  Besides  a 
director  and  assistant  director  there  are  about  thirty 
trained  chemists,  a  professional  photographer,  an  of- 
fice force  of  six  men,  carpenters,  plumbers,  pipe-fit- 
ters and  many  laborers. 

Although  the  director  and  assistant  director  are  in 
the  last  analysis  responsible  for  the  work  carried  on, 
much  of  the  direct  responsibility  is  placed  upon  the 
chemist  in  charge  of  each  investigation.  As  the  vis- 
itor goes  from  place  to  place  he  is  struck  with  the 
intelligence  and  responsibility  of  the  various  young 
chemists  who  are  directing  this  or  that  line  of  inves- 
tigation. They  gradually  become  authorities  on  the 
subject  they  are  pursuing  and  in  this  way  the  best  re- 
sults are  obtained.  Here,  as  at  the  Experimental 
Station,  only  chemists  who  have  had  a  professional 
training  are  employed. 

There  are  always  many  separate  lines  of  research 
being  carried  on  at  the  Laboratory,  and  the  men  con- 


176    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ducting  these  researches  often  have  a  number  of  other 
chemists  working  for  them.  They  are  under  his  di- 
rection and  only  indirectly  responsible  to  the  Director 
and  Assistant  Director.  In  addition  all  the  laboring 
men  are  furnished  whom  the  chemists  can  profitably 
employ. 

The  Eastern  Laboratory  is  about  ten  years  old.  It 
has  slowly  developed  into  a  great  plant  in  itself,  for 
there  are  no  less  than  seventy-six  buildings,  spread 
over  about  fifty  acres  of  ground,  in  use  here.  Such 
a  great  number  of  buildings  is  required  partly  be- 
cause of  the  constant  carrying  on  of  actual  manu- 
facturing operations  by  the  chemists  and  workmen 
attached  to  the  Laboratory. 

The  visitor  who  has  never  been  in  one  of  the  com- 
pany's dynamite  plants  is  just  as  greatly  impressed 
by  what  he  sees  in  the  small  experimental  plants.  All 
the  apparatus  is  of  the  same  material  and  practically 
the  same  model  as  that  used  by  the  operating  de- 
partment. There  is  the  same  business-like  attention 
to  the  work  in  hand.  A  few  hundred  pounds  of  nitro- 
glycerin, or  N.  G.,  as  it  is  commonly  known  on  the 
banks  of  the  Delaware,  require  just  about  the  same 
respect  as  several  thousand  pounds.  Every  detail  of 
manufacturing  dynamite  is  studied  and  actually  car- 
ried out  at  these  small  plants.  Even  the  way  the  cart- 
ridges are  loaded  comes  in  for  observation  from  day 
to  day  by  the  keen-eyed  scientists. 


XII 

TESTING 

MANY  are  the  tests  to  which  the  various  kinds 
and  grades  of  dynamite  are  put.  One  of  the 
most  important  is  the  pressure  test.  A  stick  of  dyna- 
mite is  securely  locked  within  a  great  steel  machine, 
the  druckmesser,  or  pressure  gauge,  and  there  it  is  de- 
tonated. So  securely  is  it  folded  about  by  the  layers 
of  steel  that  the  sound  of  its  detonation  reaches  the 
outer  world  merely  as  a  click.  There  is  no  need  of 
describing  the  damage  that  one  stick  of  dynamite 
would  do  in  an  ordinary  place,  but  so  delicate  as 
well  as  strong  is  the  druckmesser  that  the  dynamite 
which  goes  off  within  it  sets  in  operation  an  apparatus 
which  pencils  a  slight  line  upon  a  piece  of  paper,  the 
direction  of  the  line  indicating  the  amount  of  pres- 
sure of  the  explosive  within.  The  test  is  very  ac- 
curate. The  temperature  within  the  druckmesser  at 
the  moment  of  detonation  is  as  high  as  30000  centi- 
grade, or  more  than  5000  °  Fahrenheit. 

A  test  which  the  non-technical  visitor  can  far  more 
readily  understand  is  the  very  simple  but  accurate 
method  of  determining  velocity.  Not  only  must  the 
chemists  know  the  amount  of  pressure  exerted  by  the 
explosives  which  their  company  makes,  but  they  must 
discover  in  all  cases  how  soon  that  pressure  develops 
— in  other  words — the  velocity.  For  example  two 
half  sticks  of  dynamite  are  wrapped  in  a  roll  of  paper 
177 


178 


180    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

and  one  of  them  is  detonated.  By  knowing  the  dis- 
tance between  the  two  sticks,  how  soon  the  first  sets 
the  second  off,  and  by  measuring  various  marks  which 
the  detonation  of  one  or  both  makes  upon  adjoining 
pieces  of  metal,  the  men  in  charge  can  measure  to  the 
nicest  point  the  velocity  of  the  particular  explosive 
under  observation. 

Great  care  is  taken  in  testing  detonating  caps,  and 
several  entire  buildings  are  devoted  to  this  branch 
of  the  work.  A  particle  of  one  of  the  explosives  used 
for  caps  is  placed  where  a  tiny  hammer  falls  upon 
it.  If  the  detonation  does  not  result  from  the  ham- 
mer's first  drop,  ninety-nine  other  attempts  are  made 
by  the  patient  operators  from  precisely  the  same 
height  before  the  hammer  is  lifted  a  fraction  higher. 
Each  one  of  the  hundred  drops  of  the  hammer  which 
fails  to  set  off  the  explosive  as  well  as  those  which  do 
set  it  off,  is  recorded  by  the  chemist  in  charge. 

No  section  of  the  work  at  the  Eastern  Laboratory 
is  of  greater  human  interest  than  the  testing  of  per- 
missible explosives  or  those  which  have  passed  cer- 
tain tests  prescribed  by  the  Federal  Bureau  of  Mines. 
One  of  the  chief  uses  for  explosives  is  the  breaking 
up  of  coal  in  mines,  and  until  recent  years  the  fatali- 
ties in  collieries  from  the  use  of  improper  explosives 
were  shocking  in  number.  In  1906  eleven  per  cent 
of  the  deaths  in  coal  mines  were  due  to  gas  or  dust 
explosions.  But  in  1907  Congress  established  a  test- 
ing station  in  Pittsburg  under  the  Geological  Survey, 
and  the  du  Pont  Company  has  been  foremost  in  meet- 
ing the  requirements  of  this  Government  testing  sta- 
tion. 

In  the  first  year's  work  of  that  institution,  twelve 
manufacturers  submitted  29  explosives  for  examina- 
tion.    Of  these,  17  passed  all  the  requirements  and 


i8i 


1 82    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

were  admitted  to  the  list  of  permissible  explosives. 
The  du  Pont  Company  submitted  seven  powders  and 
all  were  admitted.  The  reason  that  the  du  Pont 
Company  has  been  so  successful  in  having  its  prod- 
ucts admitted  as  permissible  explosives  is  because  they 
are  so  thoroughly  tested  beforehand  at  the  Eastern 
Laboratory.  The  company  has  spent  enormous  sums 
in  setting  up  apparatus  expressly  for  the  purpose  of 
discovering  whether  its  explosives  are  as  safe  as  they 
can  be  made. 

The  testing  gallery  for  permissible  explosives  at 
the  Eastern  Laboratory  is  a  duplicate  of  the  one  used 
by  the  German  Government,  the  first  government  to 
take  up  the  subject  of  finding  safe  explosives  for  coal 
mines.  The  gallery  consists  of  a  long  steel  cylinder 
into  which  are  poured  dust,  pulverized  coal  and  other 
substances  found  in  coal  mines.  Into  this  gallery  are 
fired  various  explosives  by  means  of  a  cannon  or 
mortar.  The  gallery  is  open  at  the  farther  end  and 
there  are  outlets  at  the  top  and  windows  through 
which  the  effect  of  the  explosive  may  be  witnessed. 
Four  sticks  of  a  permissible  explosive  fired  into  a 
mass  of  dust,  gas  and  pulverized  coal  result  in  only 
a  few  puffs  of  harmless-looking  smoke,  whereas  half 
a  stick  of  a  non-permissible  explosive  set  off  in  the 
same  amount  of  dust,  gas  and  pulverized  coal  results 
in  a  frightful  outpouring  of  thick,  black  smoke  and 
ugly-looking  flames.  The  chemical  tests  of  coal-mine 
explosives  include  analyses  of  the  explosives,  chem- 
ical examination  of  combustion,  stability,  exudation 
and  other  tests  necessary  to  determine  the  effects  of 
storage  and  keeping  qualities.  The  physical  tests  in- 
volve besides  the  use  of  the  gas  and  dust  gallery 
already  described,  the  ballistic  pendulum,  and 
Trautzl  lead  blocks  employed  to  measure  the  unit  of 


184    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

disruptive  force;  the  calorimeter  which  measures  the 
heat  given  off  by  the  detonations ;  the  rate  detonation 
apparatus,  used  to  determine  the  velocity  with  which 
detonation  travels  through  a  given  length  of  explo- 
sive; a  flame-testing  apparatus  for  measuring  the 
length  and  duration  of  flames  generated  by  explo- 
sives; an  impact  machine,  designed  to  determine  the 
sensitiveness  of  an  explosive  to  shock;  and  the  pres- 
sure gauge  already  spoken  of. 

If  all  the  work  at  the  Eastern  Laboratory  were  com- 
pletely or  adequately  described,  it  would  transcend 
the  limits  of  one  article.  But  the  writer  has  wholly 
failed  in  his  purpose  if  the  reader  has  not  gathered 
the  idea  that  the  du  Pont  Company  has  devoted  every 
possible  means  to  improving  and  perfecting  its  prod- 
uct. The  expense  of  maintaining  the  two  experi- 
ment stations  is  equal  to  the  total  expense  of  many 
large  business  enterprises.  Of  course  this  would  not 
be  maintained  if  they  did  not  pay  in  a  commercial 
sense.  But  there  are  comparatively  few  manufac- 
turers who  have  a  sufficiently  enlightened  business 
sense  to  enter  experimental  and  scientific  work  on  such 
a  large  scale. 

The  best  results  are  obtained  from  the  two  experi- 
ment stations  only  by  fair  treatment  of  the  men  em- 
ployed there.  They  are  rapidly  promoted  as  they 
show  fitness  for  their  work,  and  they  are  also  awarded 
bonuses  of  stock  for  unusually  meritorious  work  and 
the  accomplishment  of  some  definite  result  such  as  in- 
ventions and  the  development  of  new  processes.  The 
bonus  system  applies  as  well  to  other  departments  of 
the  company.  Its  workings,  and  in  general  the  treat- 
ment of  its  employes  past  and  present  by  the  du  Pont 
Company,  will  be  the  subject  of  the  next  chapter. 


liS 


XIII 

THE  DU   PONTS  AND   THEIR  WORKMEN 

IN  any  modern  industry  of  great  magnitude,  the 
problem  of  dealing  with,  and  properly  handling, 
the  workers  is  almost  as  vital  as  turning  out  the  prod- 
uct itself.  As  the  relations  of  labor  to  capital  re- 
ceive closer  and  closer  attention  from  all  classes  of 
thinkers,  the  task  of  adjusting  these  relations  in  a 
satisfactory  manner  must  receive  increasing  attention 
from  the  large  corporations. 

The  fair  and  friendly  relations  between  the  work- 
men and  the  members  of  the  du  Pont  family  have 
long  existed  and  a  brief  glance  at  the  measures 
adopted  by  the  company  for  looking  after  the  welfare 
of  its  men  and  interesting  them  in  turn  in  its  own  wel- 
fare may  not  be  amiss. 

At  the  present  time  the  force  of  laborers  em- 
ployed by  the  company  is  so  large  and  the  plants 
are  so  scattered,  that  the  old  intimate  relations 
between  the  owners  and  the  men  are  no  longer  possi- 
ble. But  there  has  always  been  some  official  who  has 
taken  a  particular  interest  in  the  laborers,  and  the 
company  is  now  as  ready  as  it  always  has  been  to  pro- 
vide for  disabled  workmen  and  to  look  after  the  fam- 
ilies of  those  who  are  injured  or  killed.  The  dan- 
gerous character  of  the  business  has  always  had  full 
recognition  from  its  managers. 

The  du  Pont  Company  was  early  among  the  large 
corporations  to  adopt  a  system  of  profit  sharing.     Its 

186 


A  Century  of  Success  187 

profit  sharing  or  bonus  plan,  while  by  no  means 
unique,  is  regarded  as  more  than  ordinarily  generous. 
Bonuses  are  of  two  classes.  The  first  class  covers 
those  cases  where  awards  are  made  to  employes  for 
inventions,  or  other  conspicuous  service.  The  second 
class  includes  awards  which  are  made  to  those  who 
have  contributed  most  in  a  general  way  to  the  com- 
pany's success,  and  the  amount  awarded  in  these  lat- 
ter cases  is  governed  by  the  amount  of  the  company's 
surplus  earnings  from  year  to  year. 

In  both  classes  of  bonus  awards  the  certificates  of 
stock  are  issued  in  the  names  of  the  beneficiaries,  but 
they  do  not  actually  receive  the  stock  until  the  earn- 
ings of  the  company  have  reached  a  total  equal  to 
the  par  value  ($100  a  share)  of  the  stock  thus 
awarded.  But  in  the  meantime  the  beneficiary  re- 
ceives all  dividends  on  the  stock,  and  if  he  leaves  or 
is  discharged  he  is  given  either  in  cash  or  in  stock 
an  amount  represented  by  the  accumulated  earnings 
on  his  shares  from  the  time  they  were  awarded  to  him 
until  his  employment  terminates.  If  a  man  dies,  the 
bonus  stock  at  once  becomes  fully  paid  up  or  earned, 
and  without  having  to  wait  for  further  earnings  to 
accumulate  it  goes  to  whomsoever  he  may  have  desig- 
nated for  the  purpose. 

Since  1909  the  company  has  offered  each  year  two 
thousand  shares  of  preferred  stock  to  its  employes 
at  about  the  market  price.  In  some  years  the  privi- 
lege of  substituting  subscriptions  to  common  stock  has 
been  granted.  Employes  may  pay  for  their  stock  in 
as  small  an  amount  as  $2  a  month  per  share.  They 
also  may  pay  as  much  at  one  time  as  they  please. 
They  receive  all  dividends  from  the  time  they  sub- 
scribe. They  are  charged  interest  at  5  per  cent  on 
the  price  at  which  they  subscribe  for  the  stock  and  are 


1 88    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

credited  with  5  per  cent  on  all  payments  they  make 
for  it  until  it  is  paid  up  in  full. 

An  employe  can  get  back  at  any  time  the  amount 
credited  to  the  payments  on  his  stock.  If  he  is  laid 
off  because  of  slack  work  at  the  mills,  he  can  continue 
his  payments  if  he  cares  to  do  so.  The  same  is  true 
of  those  who  are  ill  or  disabled.  If  a  subscriber  has 
paid  more  than  the  minimum  amount  on  his  stock 
he  can  stop  payments  for  a  time  if  he  cares  to  do  so. 
If  he  dies,  his  estate  can  continue  the  payments  if  de- 
sirable until  the  shares  are  paid  up  in  full. 

The  company  also  manages  a  Savings  Fund  for  its 
employes.  Deposits  may  be  made  of  not  more  than 
$2,000  in  any  one  year,  and  5  per  cent  interest  is  paid. 
The  men  are  allowed  to  have  deductions  made  from 
their  wages  or  salaries  and  credited  to  the  fund.  By 
sending  in  the  proper  draft  they  are  enabled  to  make 
withdrawals.  When  a  man  leaves  the  company  he 
is  expected  to  withdraw  his  deposit. 

The  pension  system  is  an  important  feature  with 
the  du  Pont  Company.  After  fifteen  years'  of  con- 
tinuous service,  an  employe  is  eligible  to  apply  for  a 
pension.  If  a  pension  is  granted,  payments  are  made 
monthly  and  there  is  given  for  each  year  of  service 
an  amount  equal  to  one  and  one-half  per  cent  of 
the  highest  average  monthly  pay  for  any  year  of  his 
service  during  the  last  ten  consecutive  years.  After 
a  pension  has  been  granted  its  payment  and  continu- 
ance are  governed  by  the  provisions  of  the  Pension 
Plan.  The  continuity  of  service  on  which  the  grant- 
ing of  pensions  is  based  is  not  considered  broken  by 
absence  due  solely  to  illness  or  injury,  or  because  of 
leave  of  absence  duly  granted  or  by  reason  of  tem- 
porary suspension  or  dismissal  made  necessary  by 
shutting  down  of  mill  work  or  reduction  in  force. 


A  Century  of  Success  189 

It  is  interesting  to  note  that  an  increasingly  large 
number  of  employes  have  subscribed  for  stock,  all 
the  various  offerings  except  the  first  having  been  con- 
siderably oversubscribed.  Both  because  of  their  sub- 
scriptions for  stock  and  because  of  their  holdings  due 
to  bonus  awards,  the  number  of  employes  who  own 
stock  has  rapidly  increased.  In  1907,  there  were  218 
employes  interested  in  the  company  as  shareholders, 
and  they  comprised  27  per  cent  of  the  total  number 
of  shareholders.  By  1909  the  number  of  employes 
who  owned  stock  had  increased  to  524,  and  in  191 1 
no  less  than  990  employes  were  shareholders,  com- 
prising 45  per  cent  of  the  total  number  of  holders. 
It  is  believed  that  where  such  a  large  body  of  em- 
ployes actually  own  stock  in  a  corporation  they  will 
be  more  directly  interested  in  its  welfare  and  will  feel 
that  they  are  partners  as  well  as  workmen. 


XIV 

SMOKELESS  POWDER  AND  THE  SPORTSMAN 

GUNPOWDER,  or  black  powder,  the  first  ex- 
plosive of  which  man  has  any  record,  still  is 
employed  for  various  purposes  in  all  parts  of  the 
world  and  is  consumed  in  vast  quantities.  But  we 
have  seen  in  previous  chapters  what  strides  have  been 
made  in  the  use  of  that  far  newer  and  more  powerful 
explosive,  dynamite,  and  also  there  has  been  related 
something  of  the  nature  of  and  early  experiments  in 
yet  a  third  class  of  explosives,  smokeless  powder.  It 
now  remains  to  narrate  briefly  a  few  of  the  benefits 
and  uses  which  have  followed  from  the  general  in- 
troduction of  smokeless  powder. 

In  the  combustion  of  ordinary  gunpowder  there 
is  given  off  a  large  amount  of  solid  matter,  which  not 
only  clogs  the  gun,  but  produces  an  opaque  cloud  of 
smoke  which  envelops  the  gun  and  the  gunner. 
Scientists  have  calculated  that  military  gunpowder 
evolves  57  per  cent  in  weight  of  ultimately  solid  mat- 
ter, which  is  either  thrown  into  the  atmosphere  or  re- 
mains behind  to  foul  the  gun.  It  also  has  been  stated 
that  a  no-ton  gun  can  project  at  a  single  discharge 
528  pounds  of  this  solid  matter,  from  which  it  is  plain 
that  in  modern  warfare  the  ship  or  force  of  troops 
using  such  explosives  would  soon  be  so  enveloped  in 
smoke  as  to  make  impossible  any  clear  view  of  objects 
at  a  distance.  With  the  appearance  of  modern  Colt, 
Hotchkiss  and  Maxim  machine  guns  and  magazine 
190 


A  Century  of  Success  191 

rifles  with  their  automatic  arrangements  enabling  an 
almost  incredible  rapidity  of  discharge,  and  the 
rapid-fire  Gatling  gun  firing  more  than  1200  rounds 
of  small  arm  ammunition  in  a  minute,  the  problem 
of  smoke  became  one  of  intense  importance.     In  other 


TARGET  PRACTICE  ON  THE  LAWN. 
The  use  of  Smokeless  Powder  makes  this  a  clean  sport. 

words  a  powder  had  to  be  invented  for  military  pur- 
poses. 

As  compared  with  gunpowder  the  modern  nitro- 
cellulose explosives,  of  which  smokeless  powder  is 
one,  are  not  only  cleaner  but  give  an  increased  pene- 
tration to  projectiles.  Smokeless  powder  occupies 
about  one-third  of  the  space  of  its  equivalent  in  black 
powder  and  therefore  is  of  prime  advantage  for  mili- 
tary uses. 

All  the  smokeless  powder  manufactured  for  com- 
mercial purposes  is  used  in  connection  with  field 
sports  and  their  allied  sports  of  target  shooting  with 


192    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

rifle  or  pistol,  and  trap-shooting  with  the  shotgun.  It 
is  only  within  the  last  twenty-five  years  that  the  use 
of  smokeless  powder  in  shotguns  has  become  at  all 
general,  and  even  now  the  number  of  cartridges 
loaded  with  "good  old  black  powder"  that  are  shot 
away  every  year  in  this  country  is  almost  beyond  be- 
lief, and  runs  up  into  the  many  millions. 

The  general  adoption  of  smokeless  powder  for  use 
in  shotguns  has  in  its  way  been  almost  if  not  quite 
as  important  in  ks  results  on  sport  in  the  field  or  at 
the  trap,  as  has  the  use  of  smokeless  powder  for  mili- 
tary and  naval  purposes  in  the  big  guns  and  rifles  of 
the  army  and  navy.  With  black  gunpowder  it  was 
practically  impossible  to  see  the  result  of  a  shot  until 
an  appreciable  space  of  time  had  elapsed  after  the 
shot  had  been  fired.  When  smokeless  powder  is 
used,  the  result  of  the  first  shot  can  be  seen  almost 
instantly  and  a  second  shot  quickly  fired  if  needed. 

One  incentive  for  manufacturing  smokeless  powder 
has  been  the  rapid  increase  in  trap,  or  "clay"  pigeon, 
shooting.  The  use  of  ordinary  black  powder  at  a 
gun  club  where  perhaps  several  hundred  contestants 
are  entered  would  be  too  disagreeable  to  make  the 
sport  attractive.  Yet  the  usefulness  of  black  powder 
is  far  from  being  a  thing  of  the  past,  for  it  is  still 
largely  used  in  rifles,  pistols  and  shotguns  for  certain 
purposes.  Its  cheapness  as  compared  with  smokeless 
powder  ensures  it  a  steady  market. 

Probably  in  the  whole  wide  range  of  uses  to  which 
explosives  are  put  there  is  none  more  attractive  and 
more  full  of  interest  than  trap  shooting.  The  work 
of  the  du  Pont  Company  in  aiding  this  rapidly  grow- 
ing sport  is  an  instructive  example  of  enlightened 
business  policy.  The  company  devotes  a  great 
amount  of  ingenuity,  considerable  money  and  a  staff 


A  Century  of  Success 


i93 


of  trained  men  to  stimulate  interest  in  the  formation 
of  gun  clubs  and  to  advance  the  sport  of  trap  shoot- 
ing. At  first  glance  it  is  difficult  to  see  where  the 
company  profits  much  from  such  a  policy.     The  sum 


SHOOTING    OFF   A   TIE   IN   A   PRELIMINARY    HANDICAP    MATCH. 

which  is  spent  for  powder  in  shooting  at  clay  pigeons 
as  compared  with  what  is  spent  for  guns,  cartridges, 
targets  and  traps  is  small.  But  the  policy  of  the  du 
Pont  Company  has  always  been  to  employ  every 
means  possible  to  promote  the  various  uses  of  pow- 
der, particularly  for  constructive  and  amusement  pur- 
poses. 

Trap  shooting  was  not  originally  an  American 
sport.  It  came  from  England,  where  live  pigeons 
were  shot  at,  and  for  a  time  such  was  the  custom  in 
this  country.  A  few  states  still  permit  the  shooting 
of  live  pigeons,  but  public  sentiment  generally  is 
against  it.     The  "clay"  pigeon    has  almost  univer- 


194    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

sally  been  substituted  in  this  country  and  its  shooting 
requires  fully  as  much  skill  and  gives  as  much  zest 
to  the  sport  as  the  killing  of  live  birds.  Strictly 
speaking  the  pigeons  are  not  made  of  clay.  They 
consist  of  river  silt  and  tar  molded  together  by  hy- 
draulic pressure. 

Most  of  us  have  a  natural  instinct  for  hunting,  or 
at  least  for  shooting.  We  delight  in  burning  gun- 
powder. Americans  as  a  nation  have  an  inherent  de- 
sire to  use  firearms,  and  the  fact  that  they  use  them 
well  is  shown  by  the  recent  success  of  the  American 
shotgun  and  rifle  teams  at  the  Olympic  games,  and 
other  recent  international  shooting  contests. 

The  growing  scarcity  of  game  in  this  country  and 
the  ever  increasing  strictness  of  game  laws  make  the 
shooting  of  game  more  and  more  difficult  and  ex- 
pensive, even  for  those  who  have  no  sentiment  or  com- 
punctions against  it.  Trap  shooting  is  an  all-the- 
year-round  sport.  Weather  makes  but  little  differ- 
ence, and  where  the  hunter  of  live  animals  can  find 
only  one  or  two  opportunities  to  get  away  from  busi- 
ness in  the  very  short  open  seasons  which  the  laws 
permit,  the  hunter  of  clay  targets  can  walk  or  ride 
to  his  gun  club  every  Saturday,  or  oftener,  and 
"slaughter"  the  saucer-shaped  silt  and  tar  birds  to  his 
heart's  content.  There  is  no  "bag  limit"  as  in  shoot- 
ing living  creatures,  and  the  shooter  may  always 
pursue  his  sport  in  comfort  and  whenever  convenient 
to  him  or  to  her. 

It  is  a  little  known  fact  that  trap  shooting  ranks 
next  to  baseball  in  importance  as  a  national  sport. 
In  certain  respects  it  is  even  more  important  than 
baseball,  because  every  one  interested  in  it  can  be  a 
contestant.  The  baseball  enthusiast's  participation 
in  his  favorite  game  is  largely  mental.     But  every 


A  Century  of  Success  195 

member  of  a  trap  shooting  club  shoots.  It  is  stated 
on  good  authority  that  there  are  more  trap  shooters 
than  golfers  in  this  country.  There  are  nearly  forty 
million  targets,  or  clay  birds,  shot  each  year,  a  fact 
which  gives  some  idea  of  the  number  of  participants 


HAZARD  TROPHY  MATCH  IN  BRADFORD,  PA. 


in  this  sport,  as  a  shooter  is  not  likely  to  fire  at  more 
than  fifty  or  one  hundred  birds  in  an  afternoon. 

Trap  shooting  affords  healthful  exercise,  compan- 
ionship and  complete  forgetfulness  of  business  cares. 
It  is  a  manly  sport  because  it  steadies  the  nerves  and 
gives  self-confidence.  It  requires  a  quick  and  intent 
mind,  and  the  muscles  must  work  in  harmony  with 
the  mind.  But  practice  is  the  essential  thing,  and  one 
does  not  need  to  be  a  heaven-born  shooting  genius 
to  attain  good  scores.     As  a  sport  it  is  essentially 


196    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

democratic,  because  the  taste  for  shooting  is  one  which 
is  found  in  all  classes. 

Of  graver  importance  is  the  fact  that  trap  shooting 
makes  shooters  out  of  men  who  would  otherwise  have 
no  opportunity  to  learn  to  handle  a  gun.  If  it  were 
not  for  trap  shooting  this  country  might  be  seriously 
embarrassed  in  case  of  war.  There  are  few  facilities 
remaining  in  the  more  thickly  settled  parts  of  the 
land  for  using  a  rifle,  and  while  trap  work  is  with 
the  shotgun,  it  nevertheless  teaches  men  how  to  handle 
firearms.  It  is  the  one  means  we  have  for  keeping 
Americans  in  shooting  trim.  While  trap  shooting 
develops  field  shooters,  it  does  not  develop  the  fever 
for  game  killing,  because  work  at  the  traps  satisfies 
the  instinct  for  using  firearms.  The  trap  shooter  who 
goes  after  game  has  no  desire  to  kill  everything  in 
sight.  Many  trap  shooters  are  members  of  the  va- 
rious societies  for  protecting  and  propagating  game. 

Trap  shooting  discourages  professionalism  and  is 
also  a  sport  which,  to  use  a  term  more  understandable 
to  the  athlete  or  sporting  man  than  to  the  general 
reader,  is  "on  the  level."  It  appeals  to  men  of 
brawn  and  athletic  ability  in  other  lines,  as  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  several  professional  baseball  players 
have  taken  their  places  at  the  firing  line.  Women, 
too,  are  taking  it  up  eagerly.  Many  of  them  use 
smaller  guns  and  are  proving  themselves  competitors 
for  high  honors. 

In  this  connection  it  may  be  noted  that  with  a 
Maxim  Silencer  it  is  possible  to  shoot  clay  targets 
in  a  back  yard  without  danger.  Other  variations  on 
the  ordinary  method  of  shooting  consist  of  going  out 
in  a  boat  and  having  a  trap  throw  targets  over  the 
water,  or  shooting  off  the  end  of  a  pier,  or  having  a 
trap  concealed  in  the  top  of  a  tree  or  in  bushes  for 


A  Century  of  Success 


-97 


the  purpose  of  throwing  the  clay  birds  from  unex- 
pected places. 

Perhaps  the  greatest  benefit  to  be  derived  from  this 
sport  is  that  it  requires  intense  concentration  of  a 
pleasurable  pursuit.     Thus  the  brain  worker  finds 


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TRAP  SHOOTING  AT  EUGENE  DU  FONT'S  COUNTRY  HOME. 

real  relaxation  and  exercise,  but  without  the  extreme 
physical  exhaustion  which  comes  from  many  sports. 
At  a  regular  gun  club  a  squad  consists  of  five  shoot- 
ers who  shoot  in  rotation,  changing  their  position 
after  a  given  number  of  shots.  The  trap  is  sprung 
at  the  command  "pull,"  throwing  the  target  not  less 
than  forty-five  yards,  nor  more  than  fifty  yards,  with 
a  rise  of  between  six  and  twelve  feet,  at  a  point  ten 
yards  from  the  trap. 

The  "pigeon"  is  thrown  from  the  trap  at  an  un- 
known angle  and  in  a  manner  that  gives  a  decidedly 


198    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

birdlike  flight  to  the  targets.  The  determining  of 
leads,  angles,  elevation  and  the  allowance  for  wind  in- 
terference require  a  high  degree  of  judgment. 

To  promote  the  best  interests  of  this  sport  and  to 
increase  its  scope  the  manufacturers  of  guns  and  am- 
munition have  formed  the  Interstate  Association  for 
the  Promotion  of  Trap  Shooting.  Prominently  iden- 
tified with  this  movement  is  the  du  Pont  Company. 
Under  the  auspices  of  the  national  body  are  annually 
held  six  tournaments,  each  of  which  surpasses  in  num- 
ber of  participants  the  national  events  of  any  other 
sport.  These  shoots  are  known  as  the  Eastern,  West- 
ern, Southern,  Pacific  Coast,  Post  Season  and  Grand 
American  Handicaps.  At  the  premier  events  held 
at  Columbus,  Ohio,  in  July,  191 1,  nearly  five  hun- 
dred shooters  were  on  the  firing  line,  while  in  the 
Eastern  Handicap  at  Wilmington,  Delaware,  in  July 
of  the  same  year,  two  hundred  and  ten  men  partici- 
pated. 

At  any  of  these  shoots  may  be  seen  feats  of  marks- 
manship which  are  simply  astonishing;  the  shooters 
smashing  the  swiftly  flying  targets  with  machine-like 
regularity.  Many  of  the  scores  show  from  ninety  to 
ninety-eight  breaks,  out  of  a  possible  hundred.  On 
these  occasions,  Gilbert,  German,  or  any  one  of  fifty 
or  more  noted  shots,  is  accorded  the  same  hero  wor- 
ship which  greets  the  Ty  Cobb  or  an  Eddie  Collins 
on  the  ball  field. 

By  no  means  do  the  big  events  named  cover  the  list 
of  important  contests,  for  of  scarcely  less  note  are  the 
Westy  Hogan  tournaments  given  by  professionals  for 
amateurs  only,  the  Pinehurst,  N.  C,  Mid-Winter 
Handicap,  and  some  twenty  other  shoots  more  or  less 
national  in  character.  There  are  also  thirty  to  forty 
state  shoots  held  every  year.     The  Interstate  Asso- 


A  Century  of  Success 


199 


ciation  formulates  and  enforces  the  rules  under  which 
practically  every  contest  is  held.  For  the  shoot  to 
be  recognized  and  the  participants  qualified  to  com- 
pete for  championship  titles,  medals,  trophies,  cash 
prizes  and  other  rewards  for  skill,  the  event  must  be 


GRAND  AMERICAN  HANDICAP,  COLUMBUS,  OHIO. 
In   this   squad   are   a   well  known   woman   shooter   and    a    one-armed   expert. 

registered  and  made  subject  to  the  supervision  of 
competent  officials  of  the  Association.  During  the 
present  year  the  Association  appropriated  $20,000  for 
the  refunding  of  the  entrance  fees  to  unsuccessful 
shooters.  This  is  known  as  the  "Squier  money-back 
system"  and  is  but  one  of  the  many  provisions  made 
to  place  the  sport  on  a  high  plane  of  fairness  and 
equality.  Records  of  all  shoots  and  the  scores  of  over 
twelve  thousand  shooters  are  on  file  at  the  Associa- 
tion's office. 

The  du  Pont  Company  endeavors  in  every  way  to 


200    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

encourage  the  formation  of  gun  clubs.  It  corre- 
sponds with  persons  who  wish  to  form  such  clubs, 
gives  them  plans  for  club  houses  and  elaborate  and 
detailed  information  in  regard  to  the  shooters'  equip- 
ment, rules  for  shooting  and  rules  for  clubs.  Instruc- 
tions to  beginners  are  furnished  and  experts  are  sent 
to  aid  in  establishing  clubs  and  in  carrying  out  tourna- 
ments after  the  clubs  are  formed. 

The  company  also  gives  each  year  a  solid  gold  tro- 
phy to  amateurs  who  break  ioo  targets  straight  and 
to  professionals  who  break  125.  This  shooting  must 
be  done  in  registered  tournaments  to  count,  and  only 
when  du  Pont  powders  are  used  by  the  contestants. 
That  it  is  not  an  extraordinarily  difficult  thing  to  get 
one  of  these  trophies  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  in  one 
year  no  less  than  104  were  awarded.  Finally  it  may 
be  noted  that  trap  shooting  is  rapidly  being  taken  up 
by  country  clubs,  and  the  most  prominent  magazines 
dealing  with  country  life  subjects  have  now  recog- 
nized the  importance  of  the  sport  and  are  devoting 
much  space  to  it. 

The  du  Pont  Company  has  long  recognized  the 
necessity  of  both  protecting  and  propagating  game. 
It  favors  game  laws  which  will  protect  and  lengthen 
the  life  of  game  rather  than  laws  which  will  make 
the  greatest  present  amount  of  shooting  and  therefore 
the  greatest  demand  for  powder.  Its  policy  in  this 
respect  is  simply  broad  and  enlightened  business.  In 
191 1,  along  with  other  manufacturers  of  ammunition 
and  arms,  the  company  became  a  member  of  the 
newly  formed  American  Game  Protective  and  Game 
Propagation  Association.  Among  the  honorary  and 
advisory  members  of  the  association  are  Theodore 
Roosevelt,  Henry  L.  Stimson,  ex-Secretary  of  War, 
John  Burroughs,  and  Dr.  Henry  van  Dyke ;  an  officer 


A  Century  of  Success  201 

of  the  du  Pont  Company  is  one  of  the  directors.  The 
company  gives  $5,000  a  year  for  five  years  to  the  As- 
sociation, and  one  of  the  directors  of  the  powder  com- 
pany has  personally  given  a  large  sum. 

The  objects  of  the  Association  can  best  be  explained 
in  a  very  suggestive  extract  from  one  of  its  recent 
bulletins.  This  extract  shows  that  the  Association  is 
doing  the  most  practical  kind  of  work.  After  calling 
attention  to  the  recent  floods  in  the  Mississippi  Valley 
and  noting  that  all  the  loss  and  suffering  did  not  fall 
upon  man,  the  bulletin  goes  on  to  say: 

"That  nice  balance  which  exists  between  the  vari- 
ous forms  of  animal  and  vegetable  life  when  undis- 
turbed by  man  and  which  naturalists  call  the  balance 
of  nature,  has  been  rudely  overthrown  by  the  floods 
coming  after  the  hand  of  man  had  already  turned  the 
scale  against  the  creatures  of  forest  and  field.  A 
vast  stretch  of  territory,  once  teeming  with  both  large 
and  small  game,  has  been  submerged.  Every  nest 
that  was  not  in  the  tree  tops,  in  an  area  some  two 
hundred  miles  wide  and  many  times  as  long,  has  been 
destroyed.  Probably  countless  thousands  of  birds 
and  small  animals  perished.  The  larger  animals 
such  as  deer  and  bear  fared  better,  but  the  case  of  the 
former  is  a  pitiable  one.  In  response  to  calls  for  as- 
sistance, accompanied  by  rumors  that  hundreds  of 
wild  deer  were  marooned  and  starving  on  small  is- 
lands in  the  neighborhood  of  Vicksburg,  Mississippi, 
the  Association  sent  out  one  of  its  special  agents,  Mr. 
P.  S.  Farnham,  to  investigate.  Mr.  Farnham  took  a 
trip  up  the  Sunflower  and  Yazoo  rivers  and  found 
that  the  actual  conditions  were  not  overstated  in  the 
reports.  On  every  mound  that  showed  out  of  water, 
were  found  deer  which  had  been  driven  by  fright 
and  hunger  to  seek  shelter  among  the  natives,  who, 


202    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

with  their  live  stock,  had  also  taken  advantage  of 
these  refuges.  On  one  mound  of  little  more  than 
half  an  acre  in  extent  were  found  ten  people,  about 
twenty  head  of  cattle,  one  hundred  or  more  chickens, 
and  twenty-five  wild  deer.  Mrs.  F.  G.  Arthur,  who 
was  on  this  mound,  told  the  rescuing  party  she  had 
found  seventy-five  deer  at  one  time.  Many  of  them 
were  wounded  and  few  of  these  will  survive.  Hun- 
dreds that  had  been  drowned  were  found  floating  in 
the  river.  In  certain  sections  the  natives  fell  upon 
the  animals  as  they  came  from  the  water  too  weak 
to  escape  and  slaughtered  them  in  wholesale  num- 
bers. The  Association  supplied  funds  and  made  ar- 
rangements with  local  sportsmen  to  furnish  feed  for 
as  many  of  the  starving  animals  as  possible,  but  unless 
wise  protective  measures  are  enforced  for  some  years 
to  come  in  the  flooded  districts  the  last  remnants  of 
wild  life  will  disappear  from  what  has  been  one  of 
the  country's  most  favored  hunting  grounds." 


XV 

DEVELOPMENT  WORK 

IT  is  sometimes  assumed  that  only  the  "ultimate 
consumer,"  so  called,  has  to  meet  the  problem  of 
high  living  costs.  Perhaps  he  is  the  greatest  sufferer, 
but  the  problem  is  by  no  means  solely  his.  In  the 
business  of  manufacturing  important  and  necessary 
products  the  same  set  of  questions  has  to  be  met. 
The  manufacturer  is  sorely  pressed  at  times  to  sell 
his  finished  product  at  prices  to  which  customers 
have  long  been  accustomed  and  yet  be  able  to  secure 
his  raw  materials  at  sufficiently  low  prices  to  main- 
tain both  the  quality  of  his  specialty  and  a  reasonable 
return  upon  the  capital  which  has  been  invested  in 
his  business. 

Without  entering  into  any  discussion  of  the  vari- 
ous questions  of  combinations,  trusts,  tariff  and  so  on, 
it  is  an  undisputed  fact,  well  known  to  great  numbers 
of  observers,  that  many  products  in  general  use 
which  are  made  by  large  combinations  have  remained 
as  stable  or  more  stable  in  price  than  many  of  those 
which  come  from  small  factories.  Certain  it  is 
that  the  large  industry  of  which  these  articles  treat 
has  constantly  sought  to  keep  down  the  prices  of  its 
products.  Prompted  primarily,  or  at  least  largely, 
by  the  desire  to  obtain  its  raw  materials  at  low  enough 
cost  to  permit  of  their  quality  remaining  unimpaired 
and  their  prices  stable,  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours 
Powder  Company  has  organized  a  separate  depart- 
303 


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206    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

ment,  the  Development  Department,  to  search  the 
world  over  to  get  an  ample  supply  of  raw  materials 
at  the  lowest  possible  cost. 

Now  the  problem  of  getting  raw  materials  for  the 
manufacture  of  explosives  is  a  serious  one.  How 
critical,  nay  even  vital,  it  may  become  in  time  of  war 
was  shown  in  these  articles  in  the  account  of  Lammot 
du  Pont's  services  to  the  Union  cause  during  the 
Civil  War,  when  he  secured  a  supply  of  saltpeter  in 
England.  Perhaps  the  most  important  ingredient  of 
the  explosives  industry  is  nitrate  of  soda,  and  only  in 
Chile  is  this  to  be  found  in  a  natural  state.  If  for 
any  reason  a  sufficient  supply  could  not  be  found 
there,  or  bought  from  brokers  or  dealers,  those  who 
require  this  ingredient  would  be  in  a  sad  plight. 

Just  this  sort  of  investigation  was  one  of  the  prin- 
cipal reasons  for  the  organization  of  the  Department. 

For  the  past  nine  years  the  study  of  securing 
nitrate  of  soda  at  the  least  possible  cost  has  been 
carried  on,  and  at  a  tremendous  expense.  In  1910  it 
bore  fruit  when  the  company  purchased  a  large  tract 
of  nitrate-bearing  land,  thus  introducing  into  the 
Chilean  nitrate  fields,  for  the  first  time,  American 
capital  for  the  operation  of  a  plant  with  an  all- Ameri- 
can staff  of  engineers. 

When  operating  at  full  capacity  this  plant  will  turn 
out  50,000  tons  of  nitrate  of  soda  per  year. 

This  demonstrates  in  part  the  duties  of  this  De- 
partment as  to  treatment  of  many  investigations,  pur- 
chase of  lands,  erection  of  plant,  and  lastly,  turning 
over  the  operation  to  the  Operating  Department. 

For  two  years  the  Department  has  been  at  work 
developing  a  new  process  for  the  production  of  ethyl 
alcohol  from  wood  refuse.  While  the  invention  is 
an  old  one,  every  attempt  to  make  it  a  commercial 
success  has  been  a  failure. 


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2o8    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 


Rights  to  the  use  of  recent  new  patents  were  con- 
tracted for,  a  plant  erected  at  Georgetown,   South 


►       "  \  .;*♦''  iJ  *  V' ' 


■£* 


NITRATE  OF  SODA  IN  UNDEVELOPED 
STAGE    IN    CAROLINA. 

Carolina,  and  work  on  perfecting  the  process  along 
commercial  lines  has  been  started. 

Other  examples  of  their  work  along  these  lines 
might  be  cited  but  the  above  give  a  good  idea  of  the 
work  the  Company  is  doing  through  its  Development 
Department  in  order  to  keep  its  selling  prices  on  a 


A  Century  of  Success 


209 


fair  and  equitable  basis,  by  controlling  the  cost  of 
necessary  raw  materials. 

But  the  work  of  this  Department  is  not  exactly  one 
of  research  along  scientific  lines.     It  is  chiefly  the 


ADMINISTRATION   HOUSE   OFICINA  "DELAWARE"  VIEWED   FROM  TOP  OF  OLD  MAOTTHSTA. 

work  of  initiation  and  originality.  It  is  scientific, 
but  in  an  aggressive,  businesslike  way.  This  de- 
partment does  most  of  the  negotiating  with  outside 
parties  for  the  acquisition  of  new  processes  and  pat- 
ents. Its  twenty-six  active  men,  who  are  in  all  parts 
of  the  world,  must  possess  a  technical  training,  but 
they  most  need  business  ability  and  must  have  im- 
agination, good  judgment  and  that  peculiar  quality  of 
tact  and  manner  which  in  the  jargon  of  the  day  is 
known  as  being  "good  mixers."  For  the  Depart- 
ment is  a  stepping  stone  between  the  company  and 


210    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

the  outside  world.  Its  members  attend  meetings  and 
conventions  of  engineers  and  scientists.  It  is  their 
duty  to  keep  in  touch  with  the  world  and  be  on  the 
alert  for  new  things. 

Among  the  subjects  which  are  investigated  is  the 
advisability  of  going  into  new  lines  of  business  that 
are  analogous  to  the  explosive  industry.  For  exam- 
ple, the  company  manufactures  a  great  quantity  of 
nitro-cellulose,  for  use  in  various  explosives.  But  it 
was  found  that  artificial  leather  could  be  made  from 
nitro-cellulose,  and  so  the  company  went  into  its  man- 
ufacture. In  other  words  the  Development  Depart- 
ment is  always  on  the  lookout  to  discover  uses  for  the 
company's  by-products.  In  connection  with  nitro- 
cellulose the  Department  designed  and  built  the  cot- 
ton-purification plant  which  is  now  of  great  value  to 
the  company. 

But  the  activities  of  the  Development  staff  extend 
beyond  the  question  of  materials  and  by-products. 
As  men  of  initiative  and  originality  they  are  seeking 
better  ways  of  packing  and  transporting  explosives. 
They  have  endeavored  for  ten  years  to  discover  a 
package  in  which  to  place  black  powder  which  would 
be  absolutely  safe.  The  present  steel  case  is  the  most 
perfect  package  which  has  yet  been  used,  but  the  du 
Pont  Company  wants  something  better.  Again,  the 
Development  staff  is  studying  the  advisability  of 
transporting  explosives  in  the  large  cities  in  automo- 
biles instead  of  wagons.  It  would  be  necessary  in 
such  case  to  have  a  specially  designed  truck.  If  the 
right  truck  can  be  designed  there  would  be  increased 
safety  as  well  as  a  greater  economy. 

From  this  account  it  is  clear  that  the  men  of  the 
Development  Department  are  scouts  who  seek  at 
many  points  improved  materials  and  improved  meth- 


A  Century  of  Success  211 

ods.  They  employ  every  science,  but  their  chief  value 
lies  in  their  perception  of  what  is  of  business  advan- 
tage and  in  their  ability  to  strike  out  upon  new  and 
original  lines. 


XVI 

THE  PRESENT  COMBINATION 

IN  every  age  and  generation  there  are  popular  topics 
of  conversation  and  discussion,  themes  of  which 
men  never  tire.  In  the  middle  ages  warfare  was  per- 
haps the  most  popular  theme.  To-day  men  are  most 
wont  to  discuss  business  or  industrial  topics,  "Big 
Business,"  we  say.  It  is  certain  that  few  persons, 
even  those  engaged  in  classical  or  philosophical  pur- 
suits, fail  to  warm  to  the  subject  of  combinations  and 
trusts.  Their  opinions  vary  as  opinions  always  vary 
in  regard  to  engrossing  matters,  but  the  point  is  that 
here  is  the  universal  topic  to  which  men  respond. 

Perhaps  the  very  latest  phase  of  this  subject  has  to 
do  with  the  controversy  over  the  relative  efficiency 
in  business  conducted  on  a  very  large  or  on  a  small 
moderate  scale.  No  doubt  the  movement  toward 
combination  has  been  overdone  in  certain  directions, 
and  after  history  has  had  a  chance  to  clear  away  the 
misconceptions  that  always  cling  to  any  subject  when 
it  is  under  hot  dispute,  it  will  be  found  that  all  the 
great  combinations  of  this  country  have  not  been 
based  upon  the  sound  principles  their  promoters 
fondly  argued  for  them.  Certain  combinations  have 
been  thrown  together,  as  it  were,  partly  for  purposes 
of  stock  market  exploitation,  or  at  least  to  further 
the  financial  ambitions  of  men  no  more  trained  to 
that  particular  business  than  to  a  score  of  others. 
There  have  been  great  combinations  which  owe  their 


A  Century  of  Success  213 

success  largely  to  a  domination  of  transportation  fa- 
cilities, and  then  again  there  have  been  many  combi- 
nations which  have  not  been  successful  at  all. 

It  is  apparent  to  any  one  who  has  read  thus  far 
that  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Company 
has  not  reached  its  present  size  and  degree  of  success 
as  the  result  of  any  mania  for  combination  or  "trust" 
making.  An  industry  which  has  been  managed  by 
one  family  for  one  hundred  and  ten  years  can  hardly 
be  accused  of  being  the  child  of  a  brief  era  which 
gave  birth  to  combinations  on  a  wholesale  scale. 
During  the  one  hundred  and  ten  years  the  industry 
has  been  managed  by  men  trained  to  the  powder  busi- 
ness and  not  to  the  stock  market.  By  far  the  greater 
part  of  the  company's  history  antedates  stock  market 
and  financial  exploitation  on  the  present  big  scale. 
And  since  the  day  of  large  corporations  set  in  there 
has  been  no  speculative  activity  in  the  securities  of 
the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Company,  al- 
though its  size  and  the  intrinsic  value  of  these  securi- 
ties would  have  warranted  a  high  degree  of  specula- 
tive activity,  if  its  managers  had  been  inclined  to  per- 
mit it. 

Certain  it  is  that  the  growth  of  the  business  has 
been  steady  and  conservative.  The  record  of  prog- 
ress tells  the  same  story  whether  measured  by  output 
or  by  financial  returns  to  the  owners.  The  growth 
of  the  business  from  1802  to  19 10  was  at  the  average 
rate  of  6  2-3  per  cent  a  year,  the  assets  in  18 10  being 
$109,227.72  as  against  $81,099,908.55  on  December 
31,  1910.  This  steady  rate  of  growth  is  further 
shown  by  the  fact  that  from  1902,  the  year  before  the 
business  assumed  its  present  corporate  form,  to  191 2 
the  average  rate  of  increase  in  business  done  was 
slightly  in  excess  of  6  per  cent  per  annum. 


214    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

In  as  far  as  these  articles  have  been  strictly  his- 
torical in  nature  they  have  carried  the  narrative  down 
to  and  including  the  period  of  General  Henry  du 
Pont,  who  was  president  from  1850  to  1889.  He  was 
followed  by  Eugene  du  Pont,  who  was  president  until 
his  death  in  1902.  Up  to  1899  the  business  had  been 
conducted  as  a  partnership  bearing  the  name  of  E. 
I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Company,  and  the  first  cor- 
poration took  the  same  name. 

For  many  years  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Co., 
first  as  a  partnership  and  then  as  corporation,  organ- 
ized and  became  interested  in  many  different  com- 
panies doing  a  similar  business  in  various  parts  of 
the  country.  In  numerous  cases  it  had  been  joined 
with  local  interests  in  building  plants.  In  other  cases 
it  had  been  alone  in  building  them.  In  almost  every 
instance  separate  corporations  were  formed  and  E. 
I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Company  would  generally 
control  these  separate  companies,  although  often  in 
conjunction  with  outsiders. 

In  1902  Eugene  du  Pont  died  and  the  next  genera- 
tion of  the  family  was  called  upon  to  conduct  the 
business,  T.  Coleman  and  Pierre  S.  du  Pont  becoming 
associated  with  Alfred  I.  du  Pont,  who  was  already 
in  the  management.  This  new  management  on  May 
19,  1903,  formed  a  new  corporation  under  the  laws 
of  New  Jersey,  whose  existence  was  to  be  perpetual, 
E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co.,  for  the  pur- 
pose of  consolidating  into  one  corporation  the  nu- 
merous interests  of  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Com- 
pany. As  stated  by  the  new  company  in  its  appli- 
cation to  list  an  issue  of  bonds  on  the  New  York 
Stock  Exchange,  "E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  &  Com- 
pany had  acquired  a  very  large  property,  which, 
through  lack  of  organization,  had  become  unwieldy 
and  expensive  of  operation." 


A  Century  of  Success  215 

The  du  Pont  interests  had  previously  been  in  a  pe- 
culiar position.  If  orders  for  explosives  were  re- 
ceived it  was  not  infrequently  an  embarrassing  mat- 
ter to  decide  how  in  fairness  to  distribute  them  be- 
cause the  percentage  of  ownership  varied  in  different 
plants.  It  was,  therefore,  considered  much  fairer  to 
consolidate  into  one  unit  these  many  companies  (at 
one  time  numbering  some  108)  which  the  du  Ponts 
had  been  so  instrumental  in  building  up.  Their  af- 
fairs had  previously  been  largely  directed  through 
one  head,  but  as  there  were  108  separate  corporations 
the  method  of  directing  them  had  been  expensive, 
cumbersome  and  indirect. 

This  direct  method  of  consolidation  has  been  too 
little  employed  in  American  industrial  life,  for  it  is 
clearly  one  which  makes  for  efficiency  and  responsi- 
bility. The  average  stockholder  is  bewildered  by  a 
multiplicity  of  corporations  and  those  who  manage 
these  complex  units  have  many  opportunities  if  they 
desire  of  obtaining  extra  fees,  commissions  and  sal- 
aries at  the  expense  of  the  stockholder.  This  is  aside 
from  the  simplification  of  management  which  goes 
with  a  single  company. 

While  the  separate  corporations  originally  owned 
by  the  company  were  dissolved,  the  distribution  of 
their  plants  throughout  the  various  states  remained. 
In  1910  there  were  sixty  plants  owned  and  operated 
by  the  company  in  the  states  of  Alabama,  California, 
Colorado,  Connecticut,  Delaware,  Illinois,  Indiana, 
Iowa,  Kansas,  Maine,  Michigan,  Missouri,  New 
Jersey,  New  York,  Ohio,  Oklahoma,  Pennsylvania, 
South  Carolina,  Tennessee,  Washington,  West  Vir- 
ginia and  Wisconsin.  This  distribution  of  plants 
through  twenty-two  states  afforded  tremendous  econ- 
omy in  the  matter  of  haulage  and  freight  rates,  ob- 


216    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

viated  the  danger  of  haulage,  and  also  placed  the 
company  in  a  position  to  take  advantage  of  all  fa- 
vorable local  conditions.  Under  such  conditions 
orders  received  could  be  filled  by  the  plant  nearest 
the  ultimate  destination  of  the  purchase  and  thus 
make  for  safety  and  economy. 

The  foregoing  statements  are  of  great  importance 
in  considering  the  success  which  has  attended  the 
present  management  of  the  company,  which  is  com- 
posed of  the  following  board  of  directors:  H.  M. 
Barksdale,  F.  L.  Connable,  Alexis  I.  du  Pont,  Al- 
fred du  Pont,  Eugene  du  Pont,  H.  F.  du  Pont  (Win- 
terthur,  Del.),  Irenee  du  Pont,  P.  S.  du  Pont,  T.  C. 
du  Pont,  A.  J.  Moxham,  J.  A.  Haskell  (Red  Bank, 
N.  J.),  Henry  Belin,  Jr.  (Scranton,  Pa.),  Charles  L. 
Patterson,  Francis  I.  du  Pont,  E.  G.  Buckner  (Wil- 
mington, Del.).  The  following  Executive  Commit- 
tee: T.  C.  du  Pont,  Chairman,  H.  M.  Barksdale, 
Alfred  I.  du  Pont,  Pierre  S.  du  Pont,  J.  A.  Haskell, 
A.  J.  Moxham  and  Charles  L.  Patterson;  and  the 
following  officers:  T.  C.  du  Pont,  president,  chair- 
man of  Board  of  Directors  and  chairman  of  Execu- 
tive Committee;  H.  H.  Barksdale,  E.  G.  Buckner, 
Alfred  I.  du  Pont,  J.  A.  Haskell,  A.  J.  Moxham, 
Charles  L.  Patterson,  vice-presidents;  Pierre  S.  du 
Pont,  treasurer;  Alexis  I.  du  Pont,  secretary. 

The  degree  of  success  attained  by  the  company  can 
perhaps  be  measured  best  by  the  fact  that  the  explo- 
sives manufactured  by  it  have  been  lower  in  price  in 
the  last  few  years  than  at  any  other  time  in  the  history 
of  this  country,  regardless  of  the  extent  to  which 
prices  of  raw  material  and  other  products  have  risen. 
The  policy  of  the  company  has  been  to  sell  at  prices 
only  enough  above  the  cost  to  net  a  fair  return  upon 
the  capital  actually  invested.     In  a  previous  article 


A  Century  of  Success  217 

mention  was  made  of  the  work  which  the  develop- 
ment department  does  in  the  direction  of  securing 
raw  materials  at  the  lowest  possible  cost.  The  com- 
pany through  its  established  agencies  abroad  and 
through  foreign  banking  connections  has  been  able 
to  take  advantage  of  market  conditions  for  raw  ma- 
terial such  as  a  less  perfected  organization  would  be 
unable  to  do.  As  stated  in  the  annual  report  for 
191 1,  the  policy  adopted  by  the  directors  is  to  give 
to  customers  a  considerable  measure  of  the  increased 
profits  through  reductions  in  prices. 

The  fact  that  prices  of  the  company's  products  are 
low  is  very  largely  due  to  the  opportunities  to  elimi- 
nate waste  which  the  bringing  together  of  more  than 
one  hundred  entities  into  one  entity  has  made  possible. 
The  large  expenditure  of  capital  in  the  production 
of  raw  materials  and  other  means  employed  to  keep 
down  the  cost  of  manufacture  would  never  have  been 
possible  without  highly  centralized  organization. 

Nor  must  it  be  supposed  that  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de 
Nemours  Powder  Co.  has  attained  its  present  posi- 
tion without  facing  strong  competition.  The  com- 
petition existing  in  the  explosive  industry  at  the  pres- 
ent time  is  so  great  that  it  would  be  possible  for  the 
black  powder  manufacturers  of  the  country  which 
compete  with  the  du  Pont  Company  to  supply  every 
keg  of  powder  used  in  the  country  by  employing  their 
full  capacity.  And  if  the  du  Pont  mills,  one  and  all, 
were  to  close  to-day  it  would  be  possible  for  the  com- 
peting manufacturers  of  high  explosives  by  working 
a  little  overtime  to  supply  the  entire  high  explosive 
requirements  of  the  United  States  without  importing 
one  pound  from  abroad.  It  needs  no  further  state- 
ment to  show  that  the  success  of  the  du  Pont  Com- 
pany has  not  been  due  to  any  sole  or  undisputed  occu- 
pancy of  its  field. 


218    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 
1810-1910 

One  Hundred  Years  Ago  A  Century's  Development 

ASSETS 

Cash,   Accounts   Receivable, 
$  66,477.72  Materials,  Finished  Product  $22,947,529.74 
o        Investment  Securities  4,208,200.50 

21,100.00  Real  Estate  844,601.28 

Permanent  Investment  in 
21,650.00  Manufacture  .  53j°99>577-°3 


$109,227.72  Total  Assets  $81,099,908.55 


LIABILITIES 

$  27,887.36  Accounts  and  Bills  Payable  $   1,434,425.57 
Miscellaneous   Deferred 

o                  Liabilities  1,527.21 

1,091.05              Funded  Debt  16,548,000.00 

36,000.00    Capital  Stock — Preferred  15,893,248.41 

o     Capital  Stock — Common  29,426,548.45 

o       Contingent  Liabilities  2,645,132.75 

44,249.31              Profit  &  Loss  15,151,026.16 


$109,227.72  Total  Liabilities  $81,099,908.55 


A  Century  of  Success 


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XVII 

FINANCIAL  AND  INVESTMENT  POSITION 

IN  the  previous  chapter  the  fact  was  commented 
upon  that  securities  of  the  E.  I.  du  Pont  de 
Nemours  Powder  Company  have  never  been  made 
the  football  of  speculation.  But  the  success  of  this 
company  has  been  measured  not  only  by  the  growth 
of  its  business  but  also  by  the  increasing  financial  re- 
turns to  its  owners  and  the  quiet  but  steady  apprecia- 
tion in  the  investment  value  of  its  securities.  One 
may  say  that  the  du  Ponts  as  a  family  have  desired 
that  other  owners  should  share  their  prosperity. 
They  have  taken  more  pride  in  the  fact  that  others 
have  shared  in  increasing  financial  returns  than  in 
their  own  pecuniary  success.  This  attitude  is  the 
more  commendable  because  it  has  not  been  forced 
upon  the  du  Ponts.  They  have  always  been  in  con- 
trol of  the  management,  and  it  has  been  a  sense  of 
justice  rather  than  a  sense  of  possible  dethronement 
which  has  impelled  them. 

When  the  present  company  was  formed  the  many 
separate  organizations  controlled  by  the  du  Pont 
family  and  their  associates  were  taken  over.  It  will 
be  recalled  that  local  interests  in  many  parts  of  the 
country  had  often  shared  in  the  building  and  owner- 
ship of  these  many  separated  plants,  and  the  new 
company,  therefore,  proposed  to  them  that  they  ex- 
change their  holdings  in  the  many  small  subsidiary 
companies  for  stock  in  the  large  company  upon  pre- 


A  Century  of  Success  221 

cisely  the  same  basis  as  the  du  Pont  interests  had 
exchanged  their  holdings.  The  fairness  of  this  offer 
to  the  minority  interests  is  best  reflected  in  the  fact 
that  all  accepted  except  in  two  or  three  cases  where 
legal  entanglement  in  estates  prevented. 

The  same  fair  policy  has  marked  the  financial  ad- 
ministration of  the  company  in  more  recent  years. 
In  October,  1907,  an  offering  of  $2,500,000  common 
stock  was  made  to  the  stockholders,  and,  while  this 
issue  was  underwritten  by  T.  Coleman,  Pierre  S.  and 
Alfred  I.  du  Pont,  every  other  stockholder  was  given 
the  privilege  of  joining  the  underwriting  arrange- 
ment. He  could  join  to  the  extent  of  10  per  cent  of 
his  holdings  in  stock,  by  agreeing  to  pay  cash  for  the 
quota  of  stock  not  taken  in  the  regular  way,  in  return 
for  which  service  the  company  was  to  pay  him  10 
per  cent  in  cash  of  the  par  value  of  all  stock  thus 
taken  up  by  him.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the  under- 
writers were  not  obliged  to  "make  good"  on  their 
agreement  because  this  offering  of  stock  as  well  as 
every  other  offering  of  securities  made  by  the  com- 
pany was  fully  taken  by  the  stockholders  themselves. 

The  company  has  made  three  public  offerings  of 
securities  since  its  formation.  One  was  an  offering 
of  bonds  through  the  New  York  banking  firm  of 
Harvey  Fisk  &  Sons.  These  bonds  were  largely 
taken  by  investors  generally.  The  other  offerings 
were  of  stock  and  were  made  only  to  shareholders. 
All  offerings  have  been  oversubscribed,  and  those 
who  have  purchased  the  securities  have  benefited  be- 
cause they  have  steadily  risen  in  value.  In  August, 
1910,  common  stock  was  sold  at  $140  a  share  and  its 
price  now  ranges  around  $200.  Preferred  stock  was 
offered  in  1910  at  80  and  its  price  is  now  about  98M}. 
The  bonds,  which  bear  interest  at  the  rate  of  4%  per 


222    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

cent,  were  offered  by  Harvey  Fisk  &  Sons  on  March 
26,  1 910,  at  88%  and  are  now  selling  at  about  91. 
The  appreciation  in  prices  has  been  in  response  to 
growing  values  and  has  had  nothing  sudden  or  specu- 
lative about  it. 

Mention  has  been  made  in  an  earlier  installment 
of  the  sharing  of  the  du  Pont  employes  in  their 
company's  prosperity.  It  is  apparent  that  stock- 
holders have  also  shared  in  this  prosperity.  Regular 
dividends  of  5  per  cent  a  year  have  been  paid  on  the 
preferred  stock  since  the  company  was  organized  in 
1903,  and  the  following  dividends  have  been  paid 
upon  the  common  stock: 

J904 i% 

r905  34% 

1906 6J% 

1907 7  % 

1908  7  % 

1909 7l% 

I9JO 12  % 

1911   12  % 

Despite  this  highly  profitable  record  the  owner- 
ship of  the  company  has  not  remained  closely  con- 
centrated. In  1907  there  were  809  stockholders  and 
by  191 1  the  number  had  increased  to  2,163. 

The  company  early  adopted  an  enlightened  policy 
of  publicity  regarding  its  affairs.  It  was  one  of  the 
first  of  the  large  industrial  corporations  to  publish  a 
quarterly  statement  of  earnings.  These  statements 
are  given  wide  publicity  and  keep  the  stockholders 
fully  informed  of  the  financial  condition  of  this  com- 
pany. In  addition,  a  full  annual  report  is  issued. 
The  quarterly  statements  are  comparative  and  thus 
are  more  intelligible  than  many  which  are  issued. 


A  Century  of  Success  223 

The  company  has  adopted  the  policy  of  making  a  full 
and  regular  depreciation  charge  and  it  does  not  re- 
duce this  charge  in  times  of  slack  business  as  so  many 
corporations  do.  A  depreciation  fund  has  been 
established  which  cares  for  the  writing  off  of  anti- 
quated plants  and  machinery,  and  likewise  renewals 
and  repairs  are  taken  care  of.  In  general  it  may  be 
said  without  reserve  that  the  company's  reports  are 
among  the  best  issued  by  industrial  corporations. 

It  should  be  noted  that  from  August  i,  1903,  to 
December  31,  191 1,  the  new  money  invested  in  the 
company  amounted  to  $25,269,795.87.  This  new 
capital  may  be  summarized  as  follows : 

From  sale  of  bonds $  1,088,800. 

From  sale  of  preferred  stock 2,120,887.98 

From  sale  of  common  stock 5>397>352-4-8 

Accumulated  earnings  carried  to  sur- 
plus account 16,662,755.41 

The  plants  of  the  company  are  so  widely  scattered 
that  the  danger  of  really  serious  loss  through  destruc- 
tion is  reduced  to  a  negligible  quantity.  The  com- 
pany carries  its  own  insurance,  and  the  fund  set  apart 
for  this  use  has  proved  more  than  adequate  to  offset 
all  losses  sustained  through  explosions,  fires  and  acci- 
dents of  every  kind,  and  after  the  payment  of  all  such 
losses  had  grown  to  $1,651,975  on  December  31,  1909. 

It  may  finally  be  noted  that  the  earnings  of  the 
company  have  been  sufficient  in  recent  years  to  meet 
more  than  nine  times  over  the  interest  on  the  bond 
issue,  and  after  that  interest  had  been  paid  there  has 
remained  enough  to  pay  dividends  on  the  preferred 
stock  about  six  times  over.  As  we  have  already  seen, 
12  per  cent  has  been  paid  on  the  common  stock  in 
the  last  few  years,  and  after  meeting  common  stock 


224    The  E.  I.  du  Pont  de  Nemours  Powder  Co. 

dividends  a  sum  of  upwards  of  $17,000,000  has  been 
appropriated  to  surplus  account  in  the  course  of 
about  eight  years.  At  the  present  time  the  only  im- 
portant issues  of  securities  which  the  company  has 
outstanding  are  the  4^2  per  cent  bonds,  $14,452,200; 
preferred  stock,  $15,893,248;  and  common  stock, 
$29,426,386. 

Such  then  is  the  history  of  the  du  Pont  powder  in- 
dustry. It  is  truly  a  record  of  progress  and  sustained 
work  in  many  directions.  The  industry  is  a  great 
one  and  it  has  accomplished  great  things  during  its 
one  hundred  and  ten  years  of  uninterrupted  existence. 
It  certainly  deserves  and  will  secure  a  permanent 
place  in  the  history  of  this  country. 


DATE  DUE 

CAYLORD 

.'HINTED  IN  U.S.A. 

BOSTON  COLLEGE 


3  9031  01732628  1 


